I was talking to a pool builder who had just put in a new pool. His client lived in a very expensive neighborhood, drove a Bentley; you get the picture. A few months later the client’s neighbor installed a pool … from a different pool builder. The Bentley guy went to...

PrePan…Pan…Not-Yet-PostPan. What does the world of retail look like now? What did we learn? What did we let go of …and what changed us? Here’s a retrospective look forward. 1. Shopping Safely You’d have to living in a cave not to know that digital sales have exploded...

In so many ways, the date of a new year is arbitrary.  In Western societies, we’re still on the Gregorian calendar, but there are plenty of cultures that walk to a different time drummer: Hebrew, Maya, Chinese, Navaho, Islam. Yet it is the significance of a new...

Now that indie retailers everywhere are ready to rack in holiday sales, the rest of the year is going to be spent figuring out ways to retain all those new customers. Bluecore warns in a report on shoppers motives and preferences that while acquisition...

Many American consumers are feeling the financial squeeze as the holiday shopping season goes on and will be turning to flexible spending plans to help put them at ease. More merchants are embracing buy now, pay later (BNPL) options to allow consumers to pay in four...

It is so important to convert holiday shoppers into loyal customers because you have so many more bodies walking through your doors after Black Friday and Cyber Monday. When I was starting out as a retail manager, I had a new sales guy who was killing it two weeks in...