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Ben Ball's RetailWire Blog
March 18, 2010
The brick and mortar video store has been first up in the path of change to this industry all along. They required the most cumbersome model for consumers and the highest cost in the marketplace to survive. While we have often argued in this space that the pundits touting the ...
March 17, 2010
For a retailer, being first into a category or technology is a positioning/image move--not an ownership move. If the new technology is worth being first in, then Best Buy will most certainly not be the last, and there is no guarantee that they will be the best....
March 17, 2010
Whether or not the use of employees (or CEOs for that matter) in ads is effective depends entirely on the credibility of the employee for the message offered. When the employees manufacturing diabetes test strips and meters tells you they are sold on the benefits of their products because they, ...
March 16, 2010
L.L.Bean may be viewing this as "something completely new" and that is probably a good thing. But in another perspective, this is just L.L.Bean adapting L.L.Bean to a new generation. They enter the space with tremendous authenticity. And there is an obvious void created by Lands' End when they went ...
March 15, 2010
Urban planning is not in our portfolio--but we do work near one very successful example in Glenview, IL called "The Glen." This is a ground-up, urban living center that was developed on the site of the old Glenview Naval Air Base. The integrated combination of living, dining, shopping and culture ...
March 12, 2010
Not in our experience. Unless you are willing to take on enough young employees to avoid being 'age banded' by the insurance companies. And we don't see any relief in current proposals being debated either....
March 10, 2010
The two biggest effects Aldi has on other retailers are to make them sharpen their private brands game and to challenge how efficiently consumers can shop their stores. The primary impact initially will be on traditional supermarkets--but Carol makes a very interesting observation about how this may play into Wal-Mart's ...
March 9, 2010
Did Wal-Mart go too far in SKU rationalization? Of course they did. Why? Because you can never know for sure how far is right until you go too far. Then you adjust. This is classic Wal-Mart. Push the limits, either through testing multiple concepts or implementing in-store experiments with things ...
March 8, 2010
Pluses and minuses on this one. Pluses are well summarized by Warren. Biggest minus that comes to mind is for small manufacturers with a large regional or even national footprint. Most of these folks have a relatively small sales and category development staff. So the workload of trying to hit ...
March 5, 2010
Any major retailer who allowed co-op advertising to reduce differentiation in their stores was asleep at the switch. Vendor marketing departments have struggled for years with the demand for differentiation -- at least from top accounts. Whether it be as simple as staggered timing or, more often, some nod toward ...
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