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Kroger had a good war when it came to the COVID crisis, benefiting from the online shift in grocery shopping. But as the Vaccine Economy takes shape, the challenge now is to turn accelerated revenue growth into long term digital profit.
As society has leapt into a new digital era, so has Kroger.
So says Rodney McMullen, CEO of Kroger, the second-largest US retailer, as he contemplates a bold new ambition on the back of the COVID-driven societal shift to online grocery shopping - doubling digital sales by the end of 2022
and doing so profitably.
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In 2016, US retailer Target set off on an omni-channel transformation journey that loved the store ; in 2020, that foresight paid off during the COVID crisis. Where to now in the Vaccine Economy?
This time last year Target CEO Brian Cornell was able to boast that the retailer’s revenue had grown by $5.4 billion since 2017; twelve months on and he s able to add nearly three times that amount - another $15 billion - to the running total since the firm kicked off its bold omni-channel leap of faith back in 2016.
It goes without saying that Target has ‘had a good war’ when it comes to riding out the COVID crisis. That’s true of basically every essential retailer, of course, but while most have seen their digital transformation forcibly accelerated by the pandemic’s demands, Target has reaped the benefits of having the foresight to invest in omni-channel long before the events of the past 12 months made it a survival 101 for retail.�
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Athleisure wear is one of the few categories of the fashion retail industry that has enjoyed growth during the COVID crisis as lululemon athletica indicates.
(Pixabay )
While much of the fashion retail sector has suffered during the COVID crisis, one category that has boomed is that of ‘athleisure’ wear as millions of locked-down, gym-deprived people look to keeping fit from home.
A number of retailers are shifting their focus towards the category to tap into this boom, including Target, whose All in Motion range has grown to a billion-dollar business since launch a year ago, while in the UK, Marks & Spencer saw online sales of its athleisure range grow 200% in the 6 months to end of September last year. Meanwhile troubled GAP has committed to focusing on its Athleta brand, one of the few success stories at present in the group’s portfolio. As GAP CEO Sonia Syngal put it recently:
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Bed, Bath & Beyond was already committed to Google and now it s added Oracle ERP to its cloud mix as a pivotal year gets underway for the retailer s omni-channel transformation plans.
(Bed, Bath & Beyond )
As the Vaccine Economy emerges, the challenge now for CEO Mark Tritton’s turnaround team is to consolidate the digital wins, make the physical outlets more appealing in the event of footfall returning in-store - the nature of BBB’s business is such that the ‘touch and feel’ the goods aspect of the real world is important - and essentially pull both strands into a coherent and enduring omni-channel whole.