Most retailers are relieved now that 2015 is in their rear view mirrors.  It was the worst year in retail since 2009, closing in the red, down .2 percent from previous year, if motor vehicles and food services are excluded.  Unfortunately 2016 doesn’t promise to be much better.

Yet amidst the flagging retail industry there are sectors that are outperforming the rest.  No surprise that Internet retailers led the pack, up over 11 percent from 2014 to 2015.  Also ranking among the best performers in 2015 were gift stores, hobby, toy and game stores, furniture stores and home furnishings retailers.

What distinguishes these types of retailers from the rest?  They are dominated by small, independent specialty retailers — the kind of shops that make knowing their customers and delivering specialize products with exemplary service their hallmark.

The retailing ‘Davids’ beat the nation’s ‘Goliaths’ in 2015 and are poised to do it again in 2016, according to anew research study of specialty independent retailers entitled Declaration of Independents:  A State of the Specialty Retail Industry Report.  

New Research Study Shows Marketers How to Make Specialty Independent Retailers their Partners for Growth

This new Declaration of Independents report provides powerful insights and information to help brands that sell through specialty independent retailers, or want to, to understand the environment in which they operate.

Download the Executive Summary

It gives authoritative research-based insights that brands can use to sell more products through these stores.

It will help brands connect with the most promising retailing partners to become a more vital partner to them and help them face the struggles unique to the specialty retailers’ business.

And for specialty retailers looking for strategies and ideas to grow their businesses, this report is essential.

That is where specialty independent retailers find their competitive edge.

This report examines the results of a detailed survey among 700+ independent specialty retailers conducted in September/October 2015 and compare the results with a similar survey conducted in 2013.  This provides a powerful look at the trends in specialty retail over the past two years.

Declaration of Independents reveals the competitive environment faced by today’s independent specialty retailers

You will gain new, actionable insights about:

• Retailer demographics, and why specialty retailers that brand their stores multi-dimensionally around a range of products and services offered, not just one (i.e. a gift store) are prospering in today’s omni-channel retail environment.
• Retailers’ sales and growth, and challenges to growth, most especially how retailers feel betrayed by their product partners who sell direct-to-consumers through their websites.  The research, however, reveals ways that vendors can partner more effectively to overcome retailers’ fears.
• Retailer‘s competitive environment, and specific ways retailers can beat their better capitalized competitors with more control over prices and more effective internet strategies with their most powerful competitive weapon – the personal touch!
• Retailers’ marketing and advertising strategies, what works well, what works not so well. The report delves deeply into how to make marketing and advertising strategies more effective, like social media and the concept of the ‘virtuous circle’ where retailers get customers and guests to post pictures of the store and store events on their own social media platforms. This ‘virtuous circle’ social media is far more powerful than any post that originates on the retailers’ own site.  And ‘virtuous circle’ social media works for product brands too.
• Retailer’s relationships with their vendor partners, and all the ways vendors can support their retailers to build sales and generate growth in the specialty retail channel. While retailers feel betrayed by vendors that sell direct-to-consumer, there are many ideas presented in this study that vendors can use to mitigate retailer antagonism. Vendors must offer the same level of personalized, top-notch service to them as customers as the retailers do to their customers.

The results of this study identify specialty retailers strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The survey’s analysis points to key take action steps derived from the research-based findings that will help retailers and their partners be more successful, invest wisely in marketing and advertising, and be more creative in putting the many internet tools to work to help and support their retail partner’s businesses.