The Magnificent Seven – Growth Lessons in Retail & Life

Many of you know Warren Shoulberg the journalist, writer, editor, consultant, and singular source of home furnishings industry insights via HFN, Forbes.com, and many others. Here, Warren shares his Magnificent Seven of Retail. Important for manufacturers, vendors, and buyers to hear his thoughts the Good, the Bad, or the Ugly of retail (we talk about a couple dozen retailers, like The Good: Target, RH, Amazon, TJX, Williams-Sonoma brands, Magnolia Home in Waco, TX, good independent specialty retailers, also The Bad: Lame Department Stores, Lame Zombie Brands, and The Ugly: BBB, JCP, and many others.

3:23 – about retail “it’s a business, but there’s a certain flair to it that other businesses don’t have… if you want to understand a (retail) business… just walk into their stores and you’ll get a really good idea about what they’re doing.”

5:03 – about one of the seven membership requirements “that define a good retail business… omni-everything… to reach the consumer however they want to be reached.”

10:20 – “the store as a destination: if you’re going to ask the shopper to go the a physical store, you better make it worth their while… best example is RH, with spectacular physical stores… also a big part of the IKEA story…”

14:17 – about hospitality “retailers are getting back into that… RH is a great example, putting restaurants in all of their stores now… doing as much as 20% of the volume… and hard to get into…”

20:53 – “Right now Target is the best (national) store in America, they’re doing so many things right… they put (a couple billion dollars) back into their stores, they put it into their digital business, same day delivery… and the good old fashioned independent specialty retailer… there are some great stores with clever merchandising.

24:36 – on great merchants vs. big data/AI: “good merchandising overcomes a lot of other bad decisions… but that by itself is not enough... you got to have both.”

You can find Warren’s writing at the Robin Report, Forbes.com, Business of Home, or you can email him at [email protected].