I recently participated in a retail webinar on wellness. My main message was that retailers limit themselves if they think of wellness just in terms of products consumers use, wear close to their body, put on their skin or decorate their homes with. All retailers, nonessential and otherwise, have been massively disrupted during the nationwide coronavirus […]
Archive | June, 2020
For Retailers, 2020 Has Been a Miserable Year, but Wait, It’s Going to Get Worse
Now that the coronavirus retail shutdowns are lifting, retailers across the country are breathing a sigh of relief. Hoping that the worst is over, retailers are encouraged that business will recover, maybe not in the third quarter, but that it will start to turn around by the fourth. For some major retailers, things haven’t been […]
Luxury in a Post-Covid World
Letting no crisis go to waste, the MBB big-three consulting firms – McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group, and Bain & Company – have all come out with their post-coronavirus predictions for the luxury market. I’ve spent hours digesting their reports, including interviewing Bain’s Claudia D’Aprizio, who is arguably the world’s leading authority on the […]
Gary Friedman Aims to Make RH More Luxury, But Can His Dream Become Reality?
In a recent conversation with fellow Forbes.com contributor Steve Dennis, our wide-ranging discussion turned to RH, the company formerly known as Restoration Hardware. “I was at a conference where Gary Friedman talked about these new gallery stores that hadn’t opened yet. And I thought he was crazy,” Dennis said. I had much the same feeling […]
Ikea Plans To Open Its Own Malls in the U.S.
Ikea, under its Ingka Centres group, plans to open 45 to 75 more malls worldwide, including the U.S., to add to its already 45 owned and operated malls in Sweden, Europe, Russia and China.