Thursday, November 19, 2015

USA Today: Department Stores are Being "Killed" by Specialty, Online Retailers

From USA Today (November 19, 2015) under the headline: Here's What's Killing Department Stores - The subhead answers the question: Specialty, online retailers are winning over consumer with better selection, prices.

The story outlines the struggle traditional retailers are having with an anemic 1.2% average revenue growth projected for Q4 compared with 15% growth for Internet and catalog retail. This confirms the long-term trend we've seen (since 1996) when we expanded our brick and mortar retail operations to include an online catalog. Over the next seven years our Internet business grew to be much larger than our traditional retail stores, and a leader in our segment. (We subsequently sold the company to a venture capital firm in 2003.)

Not that doing business online is easy. But working with companies across a wide range of industries over the last dozen years we've noted some common features among those who build successful online businesses. These include a deep understanding of their core customers, a compelling value proposition, and a willingness to invest in both operations and marketing.  When those pieces come together, the results can be gratifying. Unless you're a one of the big department stores. Here's a link to the USA Today article:

Here's What's Killing Department Stores

No comments:

Post a Comment