Renewal of Inner City Retail Stores

Return to the City: Renewal of Inner City Retail Stores

 (Photo credit: mandyxclear)

Times change.  Sometimes old ideas become new again.  A long time ago I learned that most public transportation converges at a central point – the inner city.  In contrast, suburban shoppers have always been dependent on automobiles. They have little choice; with no true town center distances traveled to shopping centers can be great.  In the suburbs public transportation is scant and not convenient.
The 1970-80’s saw urban flight and suburban shopping centers sprung up everywhere in response to the trend.   People wanted more space and the convenience of cars made it easy to shop and transport purchases without lugging bags on buses, trains, and subways.  Now, there is a definite trend among young people – to return to the city. The city offers more job opportunities, more lifestyle entertainment choices, and more shopping options.  After decades of building suburban stores, many major retail companies are refocusing expansion plans to include locations like downtown Newark, Detroit and Chicago.
A study by Jones Lang LaSalle, a multifamily investment and management company, estimates that home purchases by people under 44 years of age is down 66%.  The reason: they cannot afford home ownership.  Moreover, renting provides greater financial flexibility. The notion that owning a home was a sure way to build a nest egg is no longer perceived as valid.
Today many people are not secure enough in their jobs and are unwilling to live with a lot of debt even if they can get a mortgage.   Lifestyle is also swaying the own versus rent decision.  The choice for these young people is to live in far away suburban areas; or to live in urban areas where working couples can manage their time better and be closer to their children when at work.
There are many examples of retailers responding to this shift in consumer mindset.  Nordstrom’s Rack, positioned to appeal to youthful demand for fashion at an affordable price, is opening stores in many urban locations such as Columbus, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Chicago, Seattle, New York, Boston, Birmingham, and Washington D.C.   Whole Foods, specifically noting the change, has announced plans to open stores in midtown Detroit, Chicago’s South Side and Newark.  Both Walmart and Target are expanding into more downtown locations with smaller store formats.
Retail real estate investment trusts (REIT’s) like Federal Realty are also acting on such demographic changes. Federal Realty is developing a huge  commercial complex with adjoining apartment buildings called Assembly Square near downtown Boston (3.5 miles from the city center).  This new complex will be accessible to city dwellers via a short ride on the MTA.  Federal Realty is also developing a mixed use center (residences, offices and stores) in Rockville, MD, called Pike & Rose that is located near the District of Columbia Metro transit system.
Urban shoppers haven different needs than the suburban variety.  Opening stores in the central business districts requires retailers to reconsider their merchandise assortment.  In its city stores Home Depot suddenly found demands for shorter ladders, smaller grills, and smaller cans of paint as well as many other items that apartment dwellers prefer.  Food retailers have also found it necessary to adjust to city life – some large size containers just do not fit in a small refrigerator.  The Internet also plays an important role in an urban retail strategy by offering the convenience of delivery and allowing consumers with non-traditional jobs to shop at all hours of the day and night.
Times have changed.  The future holds many promises as well as great uncertainties. The young generation has spending power and holds the future in their hands.  But they have different priorities.  They want to live for the moment in a comfortable and flexible environment and that increasingly means in cities.  Smart retailers are following their lead.

9 Things Businesses Shouldn't Do On Social Media

Capital One Guest, CapitalOneSpark

(Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife)

By Tim Devaney
Use social media the right way, and you can attract new customers and boost your business. Use it the wrong way, and you can spark a backlash that’ll melt your reputation to a sticky puddle.
Here’s an example of the wrong way. Last September, a loyal fan of Wilcoxson’s Ice Cream posted a comment at the Montana company’s Facebook page: “Hey saw ur cookies and cream has gelatin in it. Does it contain pork? I am a muslim and love your ice cream.”
Wilcoxson’s CEO Matt Schaeffer replied: “We don’t deliver outside of Montana, certainly not Pakistan.”
Oh fudge.
The exchange went viral and caused an online uproar, outraging a lot of people besides that one fan (who, as it turned out, lived in Wyoming). Negative Wilcoxson’s reviews poured into Yelp and Reddit, a boycott was organized and CEO Schaeffer was forced to take down the Wilcoxson’s Facebook page, which was clogged with angry comments.
Schaeffer, interviewed by reporters from NBC News to the Billings Gazette, explained that he was new to social media, noticed that the fan had a map of Pakistan on his Facebook profile and assumed he was writing from that country.
It was an honest mistake, but the damage was done. That’s how social media works. “In the past the local dry cleaner could mumble whatever he wanted behind the register,” says Shama Kabani, author of “The Zen of Social Media Marketing” and CEO of Web marketing firm Marketing Zen Group. “But online the repercussions can be so much greater. Anything can go viral.”
For small businesses, social media marketing is essential; but it’s a double-edged tool. Done poorly, social media marketing can hurt your business. Here, courtesy of Kabani, are some basic social media don’ts.
Don’t mix up personal and business accounts. KitchenAid made this mistake during the first presidential debate, when President Obama brought up the Affordable Care Act and mentioned his grandmother and her health care problems as she neared death. A member of the KitchenAid Twitter team leapt to the Web with a tweet that read, “Obamas gma even knew it was going 2 b bad! She died 3 days b4 he became president.” But the KitchenAid employee had used the KitchenAid Twitter account. Oops. The company quickly found itself issuing abject apologies. The employee was fired within hours.
Don’t post on Facebook Timelines. “That’s akin to throwing flyers in someone’s yard,” Kabani says. “There’s an unspoken ‘no solicitations on personal profiles’ rule that small businesses don’t seem to understand.” In the best-case scenario, the person whose page you post to will be annoyed. In the worst-case scenario, the person will spread word of your trespass and you’ll look clumsy and rude.
Don’t share too much. Kabani says she was surprised at the number of small-business owners who declaimed their political opinions during the last election. “Immediately they alienated half their customers,” she points out. She saw several owners share the false Donald Trump meme that Obama was born in Kenya. “Small businesses didn’t think twice about it because they didn’t write it, they were only sharing it. But what you share is a reflection of you and your business, so you have to be very careful.”
Don’t blog other people’s stuff. Blogging is a good way to draw visitors to your website. But it takes time, so you may be tempted to, ahem, borrow material from other places. Bad idea. “Don’t copy and paste other articles in their entirety,” Kabani says. “It can get you in trouble legally and from a search perspective. Search engines know you’re copying content and will penalize you for it.”
Don’t send invites to everyone. Holding an event at your new location? Don’t invite people you know can’t make it. “If you have a launch party in Dallas and you invite people in New York, for the New Yorkers that’s just spam,” Kabani says.
Don’t highjack hashtags. Most people saw the Arab Spring uprising in Egypt as an earthshaking political moment. Kenneth Cole saw it as an opportunity to market his new collection. The fashion designer highjacked the #Cairo hashtag and sent out a tweet that read, “Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is available online.” Cringe. The Internet jumped all over Cole’s blunder. “This was during the heart of Arab Spring,” Kabani says. “People were dying in the streets.”
Don’t Yelp back at critics. It’s hard to resist. Someone bashes your business at Yelp and you want to defend yourself. Don’t. “I spoke to a small-business owner recently who owns a salon,” Kabani says. “A customer wrote a negative review and he responded with a post slamming the customer and all the things the customer did wrong, like being late for the appointment. Rather than be political and say he was sorry, he thought he’d use Yelp to defend himself and paint the customer as a liar. His tactic totally backfired and resulted in an avalanche of negative reviews.”
Don’t write your own reviews. This is another common Yelp goof. Kabani recalls a restaurant owner who took it upon himself to write reviews of his establishment based loosely on compliments his customers had paid him. But he wrote all the reviews from the same IP address, and Yelp, naturally, deleted them. “He spent days and days writing hundreds of reviews and thought he was doing it in good faith,” Kabani says. “Yelp just pulled them all down.”
Don’t ask for follows on Twitter. Don’t beg people to follow you on Twitter. “It puts them in an awkward position,” Kabani says. “It’s like going to a business event and forcing your business card into people’s hands — or insisting on their card so you can give them one in return.” It’s annoying. And it’s a waste of time anyway, because Twitter is no longer about your number of followers. People go to Twitter to find information when they need it, and use is now more relevancy-based and hashtag-based.

Overall, remember this about social media marketing: It’s not an announcement, it’s a conversation. People consider their accounts and profiles to be their personal space, so respect that. You wouldn’t meet potential customers at a party and get up in their face, so don’t get up in their Facebook. They won’t Like it.

iWatch

Get ready for the iWatch: Apple rumoured to be developing gadget you wear on your wrist

• Wristwatch could communicate with user's iPhone via bluetooth
• Believed to be under development with chipmaker Intel

By Daily Mail Reporter
PUBLISHED: 15:08 EST, 27 December 2012 | UPDATED: 20:17 EST, 27 December 2012
Apple is believed to be secretly developing a 'smart watch' with a touchscreen.
Chinese online sites have reported the computer giant is working with chipmaker Intel on a wrist-worn gadget that has a 1.5inch screen and uses Bluetooth to communicate with other gadgets, which could include an iPhone.
The 'iWatch' will go on sale next year, the report claims.

Several manufacturers, such as iWatchz, already make watch-like cases for Apple's small iPod shuffle - although in the latest version the firm removed the screen, possibly making way for a new smart watch

Chinese site Tech.163 claims Intel has developed a Smart Watch that Apple is interested in.
The in question has a 1.5 OLED display with indium tin oxide, or ITO coated glass, and uses Bluetooth to communicate with a user's iPhone.
It is believed the iWatch will run a version of iOS, the same software as the iPhone and iPad, allowing apps to be easily downloaded.
Releasing a watch could also help it compete with Google, who claim they will release 'Google Glass', a headset with a screen, next year.
The rumours come after an independent attempt to create a smart watch, called Pebble, became a huge success online.
Its inventors used Kickstarter to try and raise $10,000 so they could develop it - but instead raised $10 million, and hope to begin production next year.

The Pebble watch, which can link to a phone to display messages and run apps.

'Pebble is the first watch built for the 21st century,' say its creators.
'It's infinitely customizable, with beautiful downloadable watchfaces and useful internet-connected apps.

'The watch will connect via Bluetooth, and alert users to incoming messages via vibrations - and apps bring Pebble to life.

'Cyclists can use Pebble as a bike computer, accessing the GPS on your smartphone to display speed, distance and pace data.

'Runners get a similar set of data displayed on their wrist. Use the music control app to play, pause or skip tracks on your phone with the touch of a button.'

5 Supply Chain Predictions For 2013, The Year Of The Network

 
Mark Woodward is CEO of E2open, a provider of supply chain management software and services.

Mark Woodward

It’s that time of year when we celebrate the fact that next year is a clean slate and all is possible. It’s also the time when we propose our budgets and very quickly realize that we’d better focus on what’s important, as that’s where the budget will inevitably go. Or, as the beloved Judge Smails of Caddyshack — an amateur CFO (little known fact)— says to his grandson Spalding, “You’ll have nothing—and like it!”
Overarching Theme for 2013: This will be the Year of the Network
Stanford Professor Hau Lee says that competition is supply chain versus supply chain. With today’s prevalent business model of brand owners embracing trading networks of outsourced manufacturing and distribution, one could argue that it’s now trading network versus trading network. The secret to success here is how well brand owners and their trading partners can collaborate — moving beyond the archaic one-to-one manual sharing of spreadsheets to achieve one-to-many and many-to-many visibility based on real-time information across a network that provides a single source of truth.
Harnessing the collective brainpower of a trading network’s supply chain practitioners and leaders provides a formidable competitive advantage and the kind of agility and flexibility needed to handle an increasingly volatile world. This is the derivative factor – the speed at which the trading network can adapt to a new opportunity, business model, or product introduction. Smart people, all working together with timely, accurate data on a platform that coordinates business processes across the global network can make faster, better decisions that provide more profit for them and more satisfaction for their customers.
Looking into the crystal ball, there are some interesting supply chain trends that we here at E2open see on the horizon for 2013:

• Fast Data Will Become the New Big Data

Big Data is everywhere, and we deal with our fair share in today’s complex manufacturing environments. But what is perhaps more daunting is Fast Data – that is, the incessantly changing positions of forecasts, orders, shipments and inventory. This challenge is complicated enough within the virtual enterprise, and becomes downright overwhelming in the context of global trading networks – with multiple tiers of partners trying to manage information changes across unique operating systems.
In order to reap the benefits of Fast Data, all relevant participants – within the organization and across the global trading network – need to have access to a “shared version of the truth,” plus the ability to act on this information in real time. Put differently, Fast Data must be collaboratively managed – shared; agreed upon in terms of source, authenticity, and timeliness; correlated across relevant roles and processes; and understood within the context of actionable opportunities.
In the sea of information flying around the network, where is that one indicator that has “turned red” – that will ruin our day, week, or quarter unless we identify and resolve it quickly, intelligently, and cost-effectively?

• The “Social Supply Chain” Will Transform the Way We Work

When it’s doing what it’s supposed to, the supply chain function is collaborative – people (and companies) working together to meet the needs of their customers. It’s also profitability minded, which doesn’t always “play nicely” with real collaboration across enterprises.
But the ability to be both collaborative and profitable will take center stage in 2013 as two areas of social networking move quickly into the supply chain space.
First is collaborative problem solving. Over the next 12 months, online partner communities will create virtual war rooms where teams can solve problems quickly and collaboratively. They’ll also create online repositories to document processes and decisions for future reference and organizational learning.
Second, demand sensing and sentiment analysis will move upstream from Marketing to Supply Chain, generating earlier awareness of trends (either positive or negative) for better preparedness and responsiveness.
Companies that embrace social tools will have another dramatic advantage. As the supply chain talent gap worsens, the more socially-minded companies will be able to attract the best and most innovative minds of the next generation—a generation that has always approached learning and communication in the context of social networks.

• Supply Chain Control Towers Will Transition From Concept to Adoption

The buzz around Supply Chain Control Towers has been building for a while now; I predict that 2013 will be the year that Control Towers move from concept to reality. This transition has already begun, and it will continue to gain momentum as practitioners adopt a more accurate understanding of the concept: a Supply Chain Control Tower it is not a “cure all” product that can be purchased and installed; instead, it is a core competency in end-to-end collaboration and process management that facilitates good decision making based on the best available information.
Within this framework, Supply Chain Control Towers should provide real-time transparency and exception management, tools for operational and financial evaluation of potential course corrections, and an integrated system for decision execution. This type of “core competency” requires a dynamic combination of people, processes, and technologies, and it is developed (and continuously improved) over the course of months and years—not days. That being said, 2013 is the perfect time to begin the Control Tower journey.

• Dynamic Cost Will Transform Decision Making

Historically, decision making and performance management have been based on standard costs. These costs are usually provided by the Finance organization and are updated infrequently (i.e., annually or when a new product is introduced). The challenge to effective management is that the actual costs of products, as delivered to individual customers, are rarely “standard.”
A better measure is total landed cost, which incorporates shipping and distribution costs. But these costs themselves are often based on standards or averages, despite wide swings in actual costs in response to the supply of, and demand for, transport, the cost of bunker fuel, or other factors.
2013 will see a shift to greater use of dynamic costing, based on real-time visibility into granular information on product production, transportation, and distribution costs. When companies can see the actual costs of delivering specific products to particular customers building in real time, they will be well-positioned to make the right customer-specific tactical decisions and to enable more profitable segmentation strategies.

• Risk Management Will Move from Static to Dynamic

Most risk management modeling today involves offline contingency planning based on statistical likelihood of occurrence data. Over the next 12 months, I predict significant movement away from the relatively static realm of risk management theory towards the “real-world dynamism” of today’s integrated supply chain business models.
Specifically, the next phase of risk management will operationalize risk identification and reduce the time it takes to respond intelligently to disruptions across the trading network. By incorporating contingency plans into dynamic operating models with network monitoring, practitioners will be able to make better decisions within the execution window. Risk management tools will move beyond identifying weak links and ginning up responses to hypothetical problems to providing the information and communication platform needed to assess and manage situations as they occur—mitigating downside when the inevitable hits the fan.

10 Brand Marketing Trends that Should Dominate 2013

Susan Gunelius, None

(Photo credit: One Way Stock)

What trends should be on every marketers’ radar in 2013?
With just a couple of weeks until the new year arrives, it’s time to start thinking about the trends that are dominating brand marketing and will stick around or get even bigger in 2013. These are the brand marketing trends that can open significant opportunities or create big challenges over the next 12 months. Is your brand ready for them?

1. Brand Accountability

Social media reputation management has never been more important, and brand transparency is critical. In 2013, even the smallest mistake can become a huge public relations problem. You need to be ready with response plans in place to protect your brand reputation.

2. Brand Trust

Social media also makes it easy for consumers to confirm if a brand really walks the walk and talks the talk. It’s a lot harder to earn consumers’ trust in your brand today, and it will be even harder in 2013.

3. Brand Flexibility

The world is changing faster than ever, and so is the social web. To top it off, hyper-connectivity will reach record levels with the growth of mobile device usage in 2013. Your brand needs to drive the change, not just try to keep up with it. If your brand isn’t able to adapt, another brand will.

4. Brand Experience

In 2012, we started to see a significant shift to brand storytelling and creating branded experiences. If Apple could do it, why can’t other brands? That line of thinking brought us emotion-driven ads from Google and slick copycat designs from Microsoft (e.g., the Microsoft Surface ads, Microsoft stores, and the Microsoft Store website). Every brand should be creating brand experiences both in-person and online in 2013. If you’re not creating them already, you’re late.

5. Brand Visualization

In 2012, the world witnessed the rapid growth of sites like Pinterest and Instagram that brought the demand for visual content to the forefront of digital publishing. Images didn’t just enhance content anymore. In 2012, images were the content, and people loved it. Brands need to embrace visual content to tell their stories in 2012 just like the global audience has.

6. Brand Crowdsourcing

2013 should be the year for all brands to leverage the collective voice of brand advocates and turn their content and conversations into marketing opportunities. Leaving the crowd untapped is one of the biggest mistakes brand marketers could make in the coming 12 months.

7. Brands as Social Influencers

Consumers expect brands to use their money and their reach for social, environmental, and economic good. Corporate social responsibility is important to every company, but brand marketing executives should make positioning their brands as social influencers a strategic priority in 2013.

8. Brand Data

Big data, research data, competitive analysis data, consumer data, and every other type of data you can think of will be included in marketers’ goals for 2013. Turning that data into actionable metrics and initiatives will be the more challenging step, and it’s one that all brand marketers should be concerned with in the coming 12 months and beyond.

9. Brand Behavior

Using the data collected throughout the year, brand marketers will need to leverage behavioral targeting, particularly to increase ROI for digital and mobile marketing campaigns.

10. Branded Content

In 2012, we saw a proliferation of branded content that had little focus and lacked clear strategy. Brand marketers who develop focused content plans with clear objectives in 2013 will reap the rewards that content marketing can deliver for many years to come.

Vintners Think Outside the Bottle

To Reach Younger Buyers, Vintners Think Outside the Bottle

By ELIZABETH OLSON

PERSUADING consumers to drink anything other than bottled wine is an uphill climb. Glass bottles are the gold standard, so newer brands are turning to sleek, eco-friendly containers and promoting them through social media to reach younger wine drinkers.

Those in the millennial age group, between 21 and 34, are the target because they have grown up drinking from plastic and are less wedded to traditional wine rituals. And some 51 percent of them drink wine at least once a week, according to data from the Wine Market Council.

Already on some shelves is wine in boxes, in aluminum cans and in plastic. Last month, Southwest Wines in Deming, N.M., began selling wine blends in aluminum containers. Constellation Wines is offering its Black Box brand in mass market outlets like Costco.

As the industry broadens its offerings, some of the innovators are not vintners, but packaging experts who are bringing their expertise to the way wine reaches consumers.

Last spring, Stacked Wines, based in California, introduced individually packaged, stemless plastic cups, which stack vertically and contain chardonnay, merlot and other wines. Matt Zimmer, a mechanical engineer who worked in the bottled water industry for more than six years, came up with Stacked Wines’ packaging.

“We see an industry trend to more convenient packaging,” said Mr. Zimmer, Stacked Wines’ chief executive. He began the company, in Anaheim, with M.B.A. classmates from the University of California, Irvine.

Another entrant in the wine business, Eric Steigelman, a graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology, drew on his background in flexible product packaging to design a pouch for his Bonfire Wines.

“Millennials are interested in convenience and availability, and some areas like soup and baby foods have been moving to pouches,” said Mr. Steigelman, in Chicago. “Wine seemed to be an area that was looking for innovation, but little had been done.”

The biggest challenge to gaining consumer confidence has been overcoming the perception that wine should come only from a bottle. Wine in other packaging has long been lumped into the undrinkable or barely acceptable category, although some boxed wines are becoming more popular.

Wine drinkers tend to be explorers and frequently decide what to purchase while in the store, unlike other buyers of alcoholic beverages, who settle on their brands in advance, according to a study released this month by Nielsen North America Consumer Group.

New brands emphasize packaging for people who want lightweight, portable and easily consumed wine. Stacked Wines, which is expanding its distribution from California to 46 states starting in January, is using its national introduction as an opportunity to revamp its label to better explain its product, according to Jodi Wynn, a co-founder.

Stacked Wines’ consumers simply unseal the package and drink, with no wine glasses or corkscrew required. The four sealed portions, made using the company’s trademarked Vinoware, fit atop one another. Each holds the equivalent of a glass of wine, and the four combined equal a 750-milliliter bottle. There is no spoilage because the wine is packaged in individual amounts. The company charges about $15 for a stack.

For Bonfire Wines, Mr. Steigelman chose a pouch — which prevents air from oxidizing and spoiling wine — made from federally approved food-grade materials. The pouches are black with a broad stripe of vibrant color running horizontally, and were designed by Planet Studio, a design and marketing company in Atlanta.

To arrive at packaging that would be noticed amid the proliferation of bottles, Gene Keserica, Planet Studio’s creative director, said his team chose fluorescent colors because “we saw that as a way for the packaging to be eye-catching — if you can make someone pause, that gives you a split second to get your message over.”

The label’s look “can have significant influence on a purchase,” said David Turner, president of Turner Duckworth, a brand identity and packaging design agency in San Francisco and London. “Beverage packaging is not purely functional, but a way of reaching your buyer.”

Bonfire Wines is highlighting the portability of its pouch for those who like to share the experience of drinking wine with others. To enhance interaction, Mr. Steigelman added a quick response, or QR, code to each pouch for mobile-phone-carrying buyers to react to what they are drinking and keep in touch with the brand.

The Bonfire wines are produced by Kevin McGuire, a California winemaker, said Mr. Steigelman, who has not yet set a price for them.

After tasting Bonfire’s Ember sweet red wine blend or its Ignite sweet white wine blend, buyers can register their preferences for the next type of wine the company will offer.

Engaging the buyer is important because with such a profusion of label choices, wine buyers can be influenced by samples, promotions and advertising, according to the Nielsen study, titled “Exploring the Alcohol Beverage Consumer’s Mind-Set.”

Brands like Stacked and Bonfire (which is not yet on the shelves) have tiny marketing budgets. To generate, and keep, an audience of dedicated buyers, they are focusing on tastings at locations like local arts and music festivals, and on social media like Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and Twitter.

After spending more than a year choosing his wine, packaging and design, and obtaining his liquor licensing, Mr. Steigelman is missing 2012’s top alcohol sales period and will not be selling his pouches until spring.

“So few companies manufacture pouches,” Mr. Steigelman sighed, “and, for now, they are all booked up.”

Belgium Chocolate

Belgium's reputation as the world's chocolate capital could be melting as emerging markets develop a sweet tooth and the recession continues to bite.
The region became the base for the industry shortly after the Spanish explorer Cortes returned from Mexico with cocoa pods in the 17th century.
Three hundred chocolate companies are based in Belgium, which have a combined turnover of nearly £2bn every year.
While the commodities analyst Mintel suggests the global market for chocolate has held steady in 2012 at roughly £52bn, the market in Western Europe shrank by 5%.
More worryingly for many of the Belgian craftsman, who buy their chocolate already ground and cooked before adding their own ingredients, processing has shifted away from factories in neighbouring Germany and the Netherlands.
Statistics from the European Cocoa Association show that processing in Europe fell by 17% over the summer.
It is not just the recession, the economic model is changing: demand for luxury chocolate is growing in emerging economies, but slowly shrinking in richer countries.
So it makes more economic sense for the larger companies to shift production to new markets where labour costs are low and the beans do not have to be shipped to Europe to be processed.
Since the recession, Belgian artisans have been mostly shielded from a dip in local demand by growing demand in eastern Europe and the so-called BRIC countries.
But there could be problems ahead when they have to pay more to buy processed chocolate from further afield.
There certainly is not an air of impending crisis.
We saw a giant chocolate sculpture of a hippopotamus draw gasps in Grand Sablon, the "quality street" where most of the famous chocolate houses have a flagship shop.
There was also the unveiling of the world's longest ever structure built purely from chocolate in the Gare du Midi near the railway platform where Eurostar trains rumble in from London.
The 34 metre long sculpture of a vintage steam train was checked by inspectors from the Guinness Book of World Records to ensure it was solid chocolate and not bulked out using cheaper ingredients.
The tourism minister Christos Doulkeridis told Sky News that he believed Belgium will keep its chocolate crown.
"We don't want to be the first one just in chocolate. We want to be the first one in chocolate of quality," he said.
The test will be whether the country can continue to maintain its reputation as a marque of quality in the teeth of foreign competition.

The Battle at Retail

Insight: How U.S. retailers are building up their online muscle

By

Published December 24, 2012

| Reuters

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MARTINSBURG, West Virginia (Reuters) - The brave new world for U.S. retailers can be found in small cities like Martinsburg, West Virginia.
That's where department store chain Macy's Inc recently opened a facility the size of 43 football fields - big enough to stock 1 million pairs of shoes - just to fulfill orders made online.
The $150 million building, its third one dedicated primarily to supporting macys.com, has already been handling 60,000 orders on a busy day this holiday season. Macy's expects that figure to triple in two years.
"The customer is increasingly voting that she wants to shop both ways," said RB Harrison, Macy's executive vice president in charge of integrating e-commerce and store operations.
From Macy's to Home Depot Inc and Best Buy Co Inc, retail executives are racing to speed up order delivery and improve inventory management, which if done well, can help profit margins.
Many chains are also hiring staff, or even buying firms in Silicon Valley, to get the edge in technology.
"Today, tomorrow and going forward, you are comparing the experience in our store to the experience of sitting in your living room, in the comfort of your home, ordering something on your laptop, your smart phone or your iPad," Home Depot Chief Executive Frank Blake told Reuters.
"Your willingness to put up with rude associates, dirty stores and out of stocks is just going to go down and down and down. Our bar on performance in our stores is going to go up and up and up," he said.
To be sure, online sales to date account for just 7 percent of retail sales, according to Forrester Research. But the firm expects online sales growth to rise 45 percent to $327 billion and account for 9 percent of overall sales by 2016.
Retailers are realizing they must respond to that kind of growth.
"When I was meeting with brick-and-mortar retailers 24 months ago they weren't thinking about online," said Carlo Bronzini Vender, a senior partner at New York-based investment bank Sonenshine Partners who helped advise Drugstore.com when it was bought by Walgreen Co in 2011. "Now people are being more proactive about it."
Even if some retailers like Macy's are less exposed to the threat from e-commerce's 800-pound gorilla Amazon.com Inc than a company like electronics chain Best Buy Inc, they are all under enormous pressure to offer faster delivery times, better service and an array of products.
Already armed with 40 e-commerce fulfillment facilities, Amazon is set to open another 7 centers next year.
And by next year, Amazon could offer cost-efficient same-day shipping to every customer in the 10 largest U.S. cities, according to RBC Capital Markets.
This year, Saks Inc, Dillard's Inc and Kohl's Corp are among retailers that opened the biggest online fulfillment centers they have ever had.
And those without much of an online presence are moving quickly to get one. For example, T.J. Maxx parent TJX Cos Inc, which sells designer clothing and home goods at discounted prices, said on Friday it bought off-price Internet retailer Sierra Trading Post for about $200 million.
NOT-SO-SECRET WEAPON
Most national retailers have largely stopped opening new stores as same-store sales growth has slowed compared to online.
But the stores can be a major weapon for companies like Macy's and Home Depot as they fight Amazon.
Since this summer, 292 of Macy's 800 stores have been doing double-duty as mini-fulfillment centers that assemble, pack and ship online orders, up from 23 stores a year ago. It plans to add this function to 200 more stores next year.
Nordstrom Inc has been doing this for years, giving it a big lead over other department stores.
At Macy's, already 10 percent of orders placed online have been dispatched through stores this holiday season.
"It's a natural extension for us because of our ability to leverage the 800 stores' inventory," said Harrison of Macy's. He noted that the cost for equipping a store for e-commerce is relatively small, requiring a small space in the docking area for tables, scales, and room to pack boxes.
Saks is testing "ship-from-store" and expects to roll it out next fall. Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Kohl's are also testing it.
"Fulfilling online orders from the store is the most important thing that will change physical retailers over the next five years," said Matt Nemer, an e-commerce analyst at Wells Fargo.
The strategy is aimed squarely at boosting profit margins.
Saks CEO Stephen Sadove envisions a scenario in which a pair of shoes sitting unsold at his Saks Fifth Avenue flagship could be used to fill an online order and sold at full price, instead of ending up being sold at a discount, hurting profit.
Macy's computers have complex algorithms that scour companywide inventory, factor in distance and shipping costs to come up with an optimal way to assemble and ship an order.
Despite higher shipping costs, Macy's shipments are often split between locations if a computer determines that the benefit to margins from selling an item that a store doesn't need or has too much of outweighs the extra expenses.
Stores are also serving as pick-up spots for online orders, and many retailers are finding this a boon. Wal-Mart says customers spend about $60 in a store when they pick up items ordered online.
In November, Best Buy decided to assign additional employees to deal with in-store pick-ups since 40 percent of bestbuy.com orders are now picked up.
DANGER OF MISSTEPS
Even Amazon sees the benefits of a physical presence. Staples Inc said last month it will install "Amazon Lockers" at its stores, allowing customers to have packages sent to Staples stores to avoid delivery hassles.
The biggest reason many retailers are only now offering 'ship-from store' and in-store pick-up is that the traditionally managed store and e-commerce inventory had been handled separately.
That is changing rapidly. Saks is spending about $40 million this year to update its computer systems in part to integrate databases. Industry experts say Nordstrom's e-commerce lead over department store rivals stems in large part to technology investments it made years ago.
But there are risks.
Computer systems and staff have to be ready or else retailers can face disaster, said Forrester Research analyst Sucharita Mulpuru. The use of stores is pointless if, for example, an inventory system gives the stockroom person collecting an order incorrect information about where a coat is located, leading to wasted time.
There is also a big risk of an item in store being "shopworn," or unsuitable to be sold.
"It's smart to fulfill from stores if you can figure out a way to get your operations right," Mulpuru said, noting the potential for human error is another concern. Such problems are limited at fulfillment centers because the systems are highly automated.
Executives agree. Harrison said stores are not meant to replace fulfillment centers, with their much greater breadth and quantity of products, but are there to supplement them.
"It's always going to be more efficient to ship from a fulfillment center," Saks' Sadove told Reuters. "You're never going to be perfect in 'ship-from-store'."
SILICON VALLEY APPEAL
To support its e-commerce strategy, retailers are aggressively hiring in Silicon Valley. Nordstrom took on more than 400 new employees with software engineering and website development experience, including Kirk Beardsley, an e-commerce executive from Microsoft Corp who had been a director of business development at Amazon for over seven years.
Retailers hope to take this even further by analyzing online data. Macy's executive Harrison said data collected this holiday season will help prepare for the next steps in its online push.
Last year, Wal-Mart acquired California-based start-up Kosmix, which developed technology to filter data from social media networks. As a result, Wal-Mart's San Bruno, California-based e-commerce offices now house more than 1,000 staff.
Getting hold of the technology to back up these efforts is driving acquisitions. They are frequently small ones, driven by retailers' attempts to master the online sales process, rather than immediately boost sales.
Home Depot, which bought tech start-up Redbeacon earlier this year, is looking to acquire or partner with more companies in the Valley, according to CEO Blake.
Redbeacon, founded by a trio of Google Inc veterans, matches homeowners with the best contractors for jobs such as cleaning and home repair. That kind of innovation will send shock waves through the sector, Blake said.
"I think there is going to be as much change over the next 10 years in retail as in the last 50 years. So if you're prioritizing where you put your best people, your best resources and all the rest, for us it's on inter-connective retail," said Blake.

Christmas Soul 2

Christmas Soul

Nordstrom

Nordstrom family scion keeps up with Amazon online

Mon, Dec 17 2012

By Alistair Barr
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The future of retail came to Jamie Nordstrom not in a dream, but though his email inbox from Amazon.com Inc, the online retailer that Nordstrom now targets as his biggest rival.
The 40 year-old, great-grandson of Nordstrom Inc founder John W. Nordstrom and president of Nordstrom Direct ordered a fishing tackle box from Amazon last year. And then he received emails from Amazon about other tackle boxes for five straight days.
On the sixth day, Amazon sent an email to buy an additive that is often used to preserve gasoline in boats stored over the winter -- an example of Amazon's strength crunching customer data to provide more relevant recommendations.
"I was like, 'Crap, I need some of that.' They got me and all I had to do was literally hit a button. That's incredibly valuable," Nordstrom said during an appearance at the Milken Institute Global Conference earlier this year.
Nordstrom, who already has his company's online business growing at a greater pace than its rivals, sees this "personalization" as the new front in the retail wars, delivering the high levels of customer service that the department store is already known for.
That's why Nordstrom is going on the offensive against Amazon, spending heavily on technology and luring talent from Amazon and Microsoft Corp. to super-charge his family department store chain's growth.
At a time when others are still playing defense or trying to match Amazon, Jamie Nordstrom is seen as a leader in the retail industry's attempts to grow online.
"I really respect a lot of what's going on at Nordstrom online and Jamie Nordstrom runs that," said Scot Wingo, chief executive of e-commerce firm ChannelAdvisor. "He's focused on putting customers first and that's led him into these new areas."
The scion of the Seattle-based retailing family led a multi-year integration of Nordstrom's stores and website that was completed in 2009 - years before most retailers.
Now, in addition to personalization, he's going after the world's largest Internet retailer with a mobile device strategy and broader online selection.
"E-commerce is going to be where the majority of our future growth comes from, period," Nordstrom said in September at a National Retail Federation conference. "We're building a foundation to be successful in that environment. That's where the battle will be won or lost."
Retailers like Best Buy Co Inc and Barnes & Noble Inc are losing sales to Internet rivals as more people shop online, lured by low prices, vast selection and the convenience of faster shipping.
This year on Black Friday, traditionally the most important shopping day in the United States, online sales surged 26 percent, while store sales dropped an estimated 1.8 percent, according to comScore Inc and ShopperTrak, respectively.
For Nordstrom, such rapid online sales growth is business as usual. Third-quarter sales at the company's department stores rose 8.1 percent compared to the same period a year earlier, while sales at Nordstrom Direct, as the online business is known, jumped 38 percent. While it's from a much smaller base, that growth outstripped the rate of Amazon's third-quarter sales, which climbed 27 percent.
"They have always been on the forefront and Jamie knows his stuff, knows the competition and remains humble," said Jennifer Black, a retail analyst at Jennifer Black & Associates who has covered Nordstrom for more than a decade, who began her career there and meets with Jamie Nordstrom at least once a year.
"If you ask Jamie what he wants to be when he grows up, he wants to compete with the likes of Amazon," she added. "That's setting the bar high and I think that's good."
The main difference between Jamie Nordstrom and other retail executives is his willingness to spend heavily on long-term projects, another Amazon trait, according to Josh Berman, co-founder of MySpace and CEO of online fashion start-up BeachMint.
At the start of 2012, Nordstrom unveiled a $3.3 billion, five-year capital plan of which about 30 percent was to be spent on e-commerce and technology. That is double the amount Nordstrom allocated to those areas in its capital plan a year earlier.
STOCK BOYS
When Berman and Nordstrom met at the Milken conference in Los Angeles in May, they reminisced about their first jobs as stock boys at Nordstrom.
Berman had a holiday job in the stockroom of the Nordstrom in Woodland Hills, California, when he was 16, while Jamie Nordstrom began his career as a teenager in the stockroom of a Nordstrom store.
"This was about 27 years ago and he was very familiar, not only with the mall I worked at, but with the ins and outs of the specific department I worked in," Berman said.
Jamie Nordstrom is now part of a nine-person team that runs the company. He's the second cousin of three other Nordstroms on the team: Blake, president of Nordstrom; Erik, president of stores; and Peter, who runs merchandising.
Before 2005, Nordstrom.com and the company's physical stores had different products and prices and separate marketing, human resources and accounting departments.
Jamie Nordstrom combined the two, giving sales staff and customers access to any product in inventory at any time. Nordstrom can also fulfill online orders from stores, or order an item online that has run out in stores.
The system can also route online orders to stores where items are selling slowly, keeping turnover high and limiting price mark downs, according Kimberly Greenberger, an analyst at Morgan Stanley.
Most retailers, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Macy's Inc, have only recently set up such systems, known as multi-channel fulfillment.
Now Nordstrom plans to show more relevant recommendations to customers online and to their smartphones. The best selling online categories include: women's and men's apparel, jewelry, and cosmetics. Such information will also show up in Nordstrom stores through sales staff using Apple Inc iPads and iPod Touch devices.
"Retailers that are investing in the back end of that - to deliver that personalized information - are the ones that are going to win," Nordstrom said, noting that the company has more than 10,000 mobile point-of-sale devices in its stores. "We're betting pretty hard on that."
To get all this done, he has hired more than 400 new employees with experience in areas such as software engineering and website development.
Last year, Nordstrom hired Kirk Beardsley, an e-commerce executive from Microsoft, who was director of business development at Amazon for over seven years.
Other Microsoft and Amazon employees have followed Beardsley to Nordstrom Direct.
"We've been on an online growth strategy, you could say, for eight years now," Nordstrom said. "At different steps along the way we see opportunities to make a step change in our capabilities. In 2012, we saw an opportunity."
(Editing by Leslie Gevirtz)

Five Trends

Five Trends Driving Traditional Retail Towards Extinction

The e-commerce behemoth is coming, but that’s no longer news. Amazon is nearly 20 years old now, eBay just a year younger.
What is news? The behemoth is arming itself. New tactics, new friends and a hefty war chest mean that the old defenses insulating traditional retailers are no longer enough. Venture funds dished out $242 million to online retail startups in the last quarter alone, more than any other period since 2000. E-commerce, meanwhile, is now a $200 billion-plus industry in the U.S., set to ratchet up 15% a year as consumers realize there’s no reason to trek out to the local strip mall anymore.
In the retail arms race, e-commerce is winning. Here are five trends driving traditional retail towards the grave:
1.) Voluntary Conversion
The smart brick-and-mortar players recognize the inevitable rise of online shopping and are adapting to the new realities. Take Macy’s: The 154-year-old retail chain saw online sales rise 40% in 2011 while same-store sales grew just 5.3%. The company is transforming nearly 300 of its stores into distribution centers to speed up shipping for online consumers. Expected to do more than $2 billion in online sales this year, they’re even toying around with in-store online kiosks to help customers scan and compare prices.
Nordstrom, a whippersnapper compared to Macy’s at 111 years old, is taking an even more aggressive approach. With free shipping and free returns in its online store, the company has notched three straight quarters of 35% gains in online sales. Nordstrom is integrating its online and in-store strategies by introducing mobile point-of-sale systems–modified iPod touches–that eliminate lines while helping sales clerks sell customers out-of-stock items. According to Barron’s, the company plans to invest $1 billion (one third of its capital expenditures) into online efforts over the next five years.
While adapting their own infrastructure to serve online consumers, Nordstom is also keeping pace with innovation in the space via acquisitions and investments. Last year, the retailer spent $180 million on flash sales site HauteLook and led a $16.4 million investment in Bonobos, an online retailer of men’s clothes.
The online practices of veteran players validate e-commerce in the minds of older consumers while accelerating the industry’s growth. It also means they get to survive.
2.) A Losing Cost Structure
When you purchase an item at Bloomingdale’s, odds are that it’s been marked up at least three times. Once when it changed hands from the factory to the brand, again as it passed from the brand to Bloomingdale’s, and once more as it goes from Bloomingdale’s into your shopping bag. The result is a purchase price that’s some ungodly multiple of the item’s actual cost, usually between 2x and 5x.
Brands that operate exclusively online–Frank and Oak, Bonobos, or ModCloth for example–eliminate that last markup by selling directly to consumers. By taking ownership of the design, curation and retail aspects of the business, these companies can keep hefty margins for themselves while still undercutting brick-and-mortar competitors on price. And because their stores are made out of bits instead of stone, they don’t face the costs of maintaining unwieldy networks of physical locations.
As for the legions of sales clerks that retailers pay? A single web developer probably replaces twenty of them.
In Pictures: 5 Brands Most Likely To Be Gone By 2015
3.) Free Delivery, Free Returns
Even if shipping costs don’t negate the price savings of online shopping, they’ve long acted as a source of friction. Asking consumers to factor in some uncertain, variable transaction cost is never a good way to do business, and asking them to pay for returns is even worse. The experience of returning an online purchase, paying two-way shipping costs and ending up with nothing–except $15 in the red–is enough to make anyone wary of online shopping.
Tony Hsieh and Zappos figured this out long ago and built a $1.2 billion business on the idea of free shipping and free returns. This policy is now de rigeur for serious, full-price e-commerce companies. (Flash sales is a different beast.) The reason is very simple. According to Amanda Bower, a business professor at Washington and Lee University, online shoppers given free returns increase their spend on the same site by 50 to 350 percent in later purchases. When they had to pay for return shipping? The value of their purchases decreased.
Free shipping and returns will be standard for e-commerce companies from now on. One less reason to schlep to the mall.
4.) Subscription Commerce
Call it the “set it and forget it” school of business. The bottom line: People are lazy and certain items just make sense to receive once a month. At the danger of touting a model that has already become a cliche (flash sales was a cliche until it proved itself), I should point out that only certain categories of products work for this model. (Battery Ventures partner Brian O’Malley wrote a fantastic post on this topic.) Razors, as you might imagine, make much more sense as a monthly delivery item than sweaters.
The foundation of the model is recurring revenue, where customers sign up to receive a monthly shipment for a set monthly fee. This is attractive to companies because it creates a steady, predictable revenue stream, not unlike SaaS businesses. It’s attractive to consumers because the system is convenient and usually cost-efficient compared to alternatives. Dollar Shave Club, for example, ships men’s razors to customers once a month at a fraction of the cost of an in-store purchase. Men save money and a trip to the convenience store. And because DSC sources their razors directly from the manufacturer and sells them directly to the customer, they still enjoy comfortable margins.
Keep reading on the next page…
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Frank and Oak deploys a more complex model that attempts to coax volume from loyal customers. The company allows shoppers to choose three items of clothing from a monthly collection. After receiving the items, customers try them on at home, then decide which they’ll keep and which they’ll return–all for free of course. Customers then pay for the clothes they want and return the others. Other notable subscription companies include BirchBox, Manpacks and JustFab.
There will be losers in this space as mindless copycats go out of business. But as sensible companies hone their models, subscription commerce will take a dent out of categories previously deemed safe from the digital threat–toiletries, cosmetics, pet food and groceries to name a few.
5.) Fit Without The Fitting Room
There are two categories of players here: Companies that offer custom, tailored clothing online, and those that rely on new technologies to guide customers to a better fit.
The first is popular with men’s clothing companies, with startups like J. Hilburn, Indochino and Blank Label selling tailored suits and shirts at a discount to conventional custom options. The appeal here is the sudden accessibility of tailored clothing, both in terms of price and convenience. Because of the price structures discussed above, they can get away comparable quality at reasonable prices while still making a profit.
The second category is more interesting and will have more far-reaching consequences for the future of retail. First we have the incremental innovation of companies like Clothes Horse and True Fit, which ask shoppers for their measurements, along with a tally of their best-fitting clothes, to match them with the right sizes. Frank and Oak, Bonobos and women’s retailer Nicole Miller use Clothes Horse while Macy’s employs True Fit to increase conversions. True and Co. uses similar methods to match women with well-fitting bras.
Even larger leaps in sizing technology are being made by companies like Acustom Apparel, which uses 3D body scanners along with pattern-making software to scale the creation of custom-fitted clothing at a digestible price point.
At some point, data about your body type will be saved along with your credit card information and you’ll never have to visit a fitting room again.
Bonus Trend: Crowdfunding
Secure, widespread group-paying and crowdfunding applications will make it easy to split the cost of large ticket items over the web. These will also introduce new forms of commerce which have yet be seen. Here’s a hint of what’s to come.
Related on Forbes:

Tribute to the young ones

Raising the Bar High

Raising the Bar High

By Bridget Goldschmidt

The Coca-Cola Co.’s bid to lure grocery shoppers back down the beverage aisle is the new Beverage Aisle Reinvention (BAR) system, an innovation that affects the entire sparkling beverage category, not just Coca-Cola brands. According to the Atlanta-based company, the transformation includes such elements as signage, organization, intentional lighting, fixture enhancements, all of which aim to enhance the shopping experience.
Currently being tested at Coca-Cola’s Shopper Experience Innovation Center (SEIC), BAR reorganizes the sparkling beverage aisle into defined brand zones. Color, signage and a variety of other elements and techniques work in concert to provide shoppers with a better shopping experience. Further, the system employs existing shelving equipment, lowering added cost and allowing for immediate scale.
“For the last two decades, the grocery industry has focused its innovation on the store perimeter,” notes Ron Hughes, director of shopper experience innovation, Coca-Cola Refreshments. “It’s time to entice shoppers back into center store. We used shopper insights to completely reinvent the entire sparkling beverage aisle to deliver an irresistible shopping experience in a way that will drive profitable growth.”
“We believe an opportunity exists to drive traffic down the aisle and create a completely new approach with the BAR system,” added Ilene Grimes, director, large store planning and development, Coca-Cola Refreshments. “It enables retailers to not only invite shoppers to visit, but also entices them to return.”
BAR features include the following:

• 2-Liter Neck Hanging System: In response to shoppers at Coca-Cola focus groups who said they have difficulty lifting heavier 2-liter bottles on the top shelf, an overhead neck hanging system mounts to the existing gondola, lowering access to 2-liter bottles by about 4 inches, thereby making them easier for shoppers to reach and remove. The neck-hanging feature also effectively doubles the amount of shoppable 2-liter inventory, is easy to load, automatically rotates bottles and minimizes the appearance of out-of-stock product.
• Navigation Blades: Vertical signage blades jut slightly into the aisle, bringing more visual structure to better define the aisle by brand and improve aisle navigability. Brand graphics on a wood texture evoke warmth and reinforce the at-home meal occasion.
• Brand Shelf Set: To help shoppers navigate by color, as well as to raise awareness of the package size variety, all brands are organized in vertical sections. From a distance, shoppers can spot distinct color blocks, enabling them to find their preferred brands more easily. Up close, all packages for a given brand appear in one top-to-bottom arrangement, with the most profitable packages placed in the arm-level “strike zone” area.
• Strike Zone System With Energy-efficient Technology: An arm-level horizontal zone spotlights a wider range of packages that are frequently missed by shoppers who usually shop for 12-pack and 2-liter packages. Eye-catching electroluminescent panels provide lighted messaging, while under-shelf lights add interest to the aisle. Both technologies convert electrical power to visible light without heat. Further, information blades strategically placed in the strike zone highlight product information and call out pricing, and shelf wedges ensure products face forward for a continuous in-stock appearance.
• Headers: The signage across the top of the shelves, positioned slightly downward to improve visibility, with a concave curve to eliminate glare, serves as a visual anchor to lead shoppers to the brands they want and help link brands to meal and snack occasions.
• Shelf Strips: Color-coded shelf strips reinforce the color blocking along the horizontal shelving space and add to the clean, organized look that makes the aisle inviting and easy to shop.
• End Caps: Boasting electroluminescent lighting, lifestyle graphics, and reconfigurable, adjustable shelves that can accommodate all package types, these bold displays are designed attract attention, drive impulse purchases and increase aisle traffic.

BAR is one of several new concepts to emerge from the SEIC, which is developing a series of insights-driven solutions designed to drive growth and loyalty for Coca-Cola and its customers. The facility offers two retail environments that can be adapted into realistic-scale, customizable outlets for any retail channel.

Important Retail Trends

Three Important Retail Trends for 2013

Even as the cash registers and virtual shopping carts continue to rack up holiday sales for retailers, savvy merchants are casting a critical eye into their crystal balls to determine how their customers will shop in 2013. This is important, as the National Retail Federation (NRF) points out that with retailers operating more than 3.6 million U.S. establishments that contribute $2.5 trillion to the annual GDP, what happens in stores and online is “a daily barometer for the nation’s economy.” Good thing Kiplinger predicts that next year will herald better times, especially in the second half of 2013.
FORBES gathered some forecasts, surveys and expert comments to see what may be in store for retailers after January 1.
Mobile
Susan Reda, executive editor of STORES Media, writes, “The year just concluding will be remembered as the one in which mobile became embedded into the lives of consumers — and thus into the hearts of retail businesses large and small.”
Mobile developers agree. According to a survey by Appcelerator and IDC , 93 percent of mobile developers anticipate that it is “likely to very likely” that most retail companies will have enabled mobile commerce in 2013 as consumers increasingly reach for their phones and tablets even while shopping in a physical store. Consumer behavior continues to underscore this transformation. Appcelerator found that nearly two-thirds of developers also believe that consumers will make more purchases via their mobile phone than their credit card in 2013.
Integration
Founder of the direct-to-consumer shoe merchant Sole Society Brett Markinson tells FORBES the “emerging” direct-to-consumer E-commerce model recently being discussed as the “Next Big Thing” is only the beginning of the evolution pushing haute couture into the digital age. “Building and distributing a successful brand in the Internet era is about addressing the new behaviors of an evolving customer base by leveraging the changing landscape and its new dynamics,” he says.
Markinson believes the discussion has to shift from e-commerce vs. offline commerce to integrated commerce. “The consumer does not distinguish. They want to buy cute, on-trend products at great values wherever they happen to be. They want to engage with cool brands that understand their interests and proclivities. The DNA of the web must be an intimate part of the fashion brands of the future.
Those retailers who find a way to integrate will have a “killer brand.” Says Markinson, “One needs to be where the customer is, with both your messaging and your product. If you haven’t already noticed, consumers today are both online and offline, and sometimes both–online while shopping offline.  Online they are sharing, friend validating, researching, learning and developing a point of view. Offline there is touching, brand comparing and brand associating. All of this drives the brand of the future. Finding the formula to leverage that online/offline dynamic is critical.”
More and More Social
RichRelevance, a company that powers personalized e-commerce experiences released some interesting findings about social media’s role in retail. Namely, traffic from Pinterest has doubled in the last year while Facebook saw its share decline to just 90% (from 95% in 2011).
Rich Relevance’s chief marketing officer Diane Kegley tells FORBES, “We believe that social is going to have an increasing impact in 2013. We feel that the role of social media is to generate awareness, not direct sales. While traffic referred from social networks is low – less than .5% according to our data – it has grown 30% year-over-year.”
Kegley notes that retailers are getting smarter about how to use the social channels to generate customer “delight.” She points out how Target recently awarded gift cards to a number of customers who were tweeting about them over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. “Social media is one element in [retailers’] arsenal of developing brand awareness across multiple channels. All of these elements, including social media, shape or form the way that a consumer hears about a brand or offering. This contributes not only to awareness, but actual product decisions.”

Tide Pods

Tide Pods Winning $7 Billion Detergent Wars By Redefining Value

How Pods Defied the Odds in a Crowded Category

Published: December 18, 2012

In a saturated new-product world where hits are increasingly hard to come by, Procter & Gamble has managed a grand slam with Tide Pods.
The company is projecting $500 million in first-year retail sales for Pods -- a major feat, considering that of the 1,500 new consumer-packaged-goods launches tracked by SymphonyIRI in 2011, only 21% reached year-one sales of even $50 million. Moreover, because of product scarcity, P&G has not offered promotions on the premium-priced Pods, so discounting hasn't had a role in its success.

Click here to view how pods stack up to other trends in laundry

The milestone hasn't come easy. Billed as the biggest laundry innovation in a generation, Pods came to market in February, six months later than planned and without the originally scheduled retail promotions because of supply shortages. Supply problems still linger, in fact, which is why smaller bag packs remain on allocation and Pods remain excluded from coupons for other Tide products.
The product also drew scrutiny from Sen. Chuck Schumer, D.-N.Y., over reports of kids accidentally eating them, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found happened nearly 500 times in May and June. And in September, Sun Products, marketer of All Mighty Pacs, sued P&G for patent infringement.

Despite it all, with $226 million in sales through Nov. 4, according to SymphonyIRI, Pods have earned a 73% share of the $309 million unit-dose segment year-to-date in outlets including Walmart and some club and dollar stores. Offerings from All, Henkel's Purex, Church & Dwight Co.'s Arm & Hammer and Phoenix Brands' Fab, Ajax and Dynamo have a combined $83 million in sales.
Tide's share in the segment is more than double its 36% share of liquid detergent or 29% in powder, so the launch and production delays that allowed competitors to come to market simultaneously haven't prevented Pods from winning handily.
Sales in the broader $7.2 billion laundry-detergent category were down 0.2% for the 52 weeks ended Nov. 4. But Tide sales, which had been flat to down since the 2007 recession, were up 9% thanks to Pods.
Interestingly, P&G VP-North American Fabric Care Alex Keith told an analyst conference Nov. 15 that much of Pods' volume comes from value brands, even though it's the most-expensive product in laundry. In part that's because Pods marketing has redefined "value" to mean efficiency more than price. Its ads, from Saatchi & Saatchi, Digitas and Starcom Mediavest Group, have focused on how much more concentrated cleaning power Pods provide compared with value brands.
So who are Tide's pod people? There is some evidence that the brand is particularly popular on college campuses and among apartment dwellers, and people who have their washers in the basement (about 22% of the U.S. population).
And there's still room for growth, since P&G hasn't ramped up production enough to meet potential promotional demand.
Just how well Pods or unit-dose products broadly are really doing, however, depends upon whom you ask. Church & Dwight Co. Chairman-CEO James Craigie suggested on a Nov. 5 earnings conference call that unit-dose products may actually hurt the category. One reason, he said: "People tend to overdose liquid, and you can't overdose unit dose."
Some other industry executives said that while unit-dose products have reached 7% of laundry sales, retailers were hoping for 15% by now, and that remains well short of the 30% P&G has ultimately projected for the segment.