Worldwide, COVID-19 is having disastrous impacts on consumer spending. IHL’s current forecast for consumer spending is a reduction of $1.6t in sales worldwide, just under 10%. And it is the smaller retailers losing the most by far. But not all segments are doing poorly. While Specialty Stores and Departments Stores […]
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COVID-19 has radically changed retail. What is changed for good, what is temporary until there is a vaccine. This white paper talks about what has worked and what has not for retail. Some segments saw rapid growth and tremendous out-of-stocks. Others are struggling to survive due to government shutdowns and […]
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Since the beginning of time, retailers have struggled with having what the customer wants to buy in-stock when they want to buy it. Inventory distortion occurs when a retailer has too many of an item (overstocks) or too few of an item (out-of-stocks). In an overstock situation, the retailer must heavily discount the item […]
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As economies reopen, we are starting to get initial data on recoveries around the world and how deep the drop was when things were closed. As well, what does this mean for technology. We tackle these issues directly in this webinar. Click picture for the slides. For complete replay, click […]
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Jim Cramer of CNBC said it, but we were first. For those of you who have followed our economic updates for the last several months we are have been harping on the business inequities that have happened in retail and hospitality due to the pandemic and how this favored large […]
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Entering 2020, the retail world was already dealing with tremendous growth in merchandise returns, with fraud and overall costs to the retailer increasing at an exponential rate due to online sales being returned to stores. In 2015 the total value of merchandise returns was estimated at $643 billion globally. By […]
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Inventory distortion (out of stocks and overstocks) was already a huge problem in retail with worldwide costs of over $1 Trillion in 2019. Things were improving coming into 2020 for many parts of the world but small pockets of issues around BOPIS and local delivery exploded when COVID-19 surge buying […]
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Different communities are restarting retail and opening restaurants and malls. What is working, what is not? How are consumers responding? What must companies consider about getting their employees back to work? This webinar provides an economic update on North America’s retail situation with a specific emphasis on talent issues with […]
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A great deal of discussion has been had about the recovery curve to be expected in retail and hospitality. Will it be a V curve, an L shape or a NIKE Swoosh? Truth be told, you can make it look like whatever you want it to be to fit your […]
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Like the world around us, Retail has been rocked from the impact of COVID-19 and lockdowns. This webinar provides an update on the economic conditions, how deep will store closings be and what are our latest expectations for a recovery. As well, how COVID-19 simply accelerates the trends toward frictionless […]
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