DMM Retail Industry e-News Issue #161
Is Retail Faltering?? Nah, Just Follow the Data
Traditional retailers are starting to beat the online-only companies at their own game. They are figuring out how to use data, and integrate channels to their advantage, adding a “shop online, pick up in-store” component that online only sites can’t compete with. That’s according to Greg Petro, CEO of First Insight, a technology company helps retailers make product and pricing decisions. “There is evidence that there may be a ceiling (to e-commerce growth). A recent survey by ICSC found that Gen Z believes by three-to-one that physical stores provide a better shopping experience, and 71 percent of consumers under 30 years old said they shop for clothing mostly in stores,” Petro said in his column on Forbes.com. Most experts agree, the mall of the future may be where Millennials go to the gym, get their checkups, clothing, and as a potential solution to the returns problem. “Clicking a mouse on Amazon is not an experience,” said Adam Ifshin, founder and CEO, DLC Management Corp.
What’s Old is New Again: “Toys R Us” Stores May Return in US This Year
It’ll be a mere bag of shells compared to its glory days, but you gotta re-start somewhere, right? Bloomberg reported recently that children’s retail chain Toys ‘R’ Us is expecting to return with a handful of locations and an e-commerce site by the end of the year. “The stores are slated to be about 10,000-square feet, roughly a third of the size of the brand’s big-box outlets that closed last year.” Bloomberg reported, citing unnamed sources close to the company. Brand-owner Tru Kids Inc. declined to comment. Melissa Campanelli, reporter for MyTotalRetail.com, wrote that “We’ll find out soon enough if the market will support a free-standing toy store that has been re-imagined for the modern shopper.”
Case Study: Hampshire Mall – Axe-Throwing and Car-Racing
The internet can be a place where people politely (lol) throw verbal darts at other people they disagree with, or a place to enjoy lightning-fast speeds (my home page loads in 0.0024 seconds! Woot-Woot!). A Massachusetts mall has added literal speed and axe-throwing as part of its new approach to the shopping center and finding success. Mall veteran, Hampshire Mall’s general manager Lynn Gray, told BusinessWest.com that malls have changed tremendously over the last 20 years. “The word I like to use is evolution, because shopping behavior changes constantly. What consumers want, how they want it, when they want it, how they want it delivered to them, or how they want to see, touch, and feel it has constantly changed,” she said. Among its new additions – the Autobahn Indoor Speedway go-karts, and PiNZ, a small, Massachusetts-based chain, which includes bowling, arcade games and an axe-throwing room.
DMM: Data with Experience!
There’s an old saying: “What’s old is new.” DMM has more than 25 years’ worth of archived data, including thousands of listings with hundreds of thousands of tenants, contacts and location information. Past DMM data can be analyzed to forecast future data or trends. Everybody’s talking about “big data” and “data science,” basically applying sophisticated analytic techniques to large datasets. One of the things analysts and economists are doing with DMM data is predictive modeling—using historical data to make predictions about the future. Click here for more information.
DMM e-News - Issue #161
