DMM Retail Industry e-News Issue #151
Recycling + Mall = ReTuna
Lots of people have made recycling a way of life…they drive hybrid cars, cans and bottles go right in the green bins, and they’ve cut back on using everyday items like straws and plastic bottles. There’s even a retail shop a quick walk away from the DMM home office in Nyack, NY, that lets you recycle yourself. Over in Sweden, Anna Bergstrom runs a stylish shopping mall, called ReTuna, where everything for sale has already been used – kind of a fancy flea market. According to the BBC’s Dougal Shaw, the mall is reminiscent of high-fashion shopping centers, in that it is “spacious and appealing, almost Ikea-like. An art installation – a tree and circular bench all fashioned from recycled materials – greets customers at the entrance.”
“Toys ‘R’ Us” Might Come Back as “Tru Kids”
Some point to the demise of Toys “R” Us as the inevitable surrender of in-store retail to internet shopping. They would be wrong, and the proof is not only in the various ways brick-and-mortar shopping experiences offer experiences that can’t be replicated online, but the fact that there are others working very hard to bring Toys “R” Us back, albeit in a more nimble, Y2K+ way. A company headed by former Toys “R” Us chief merchandiser Richard Barry has rights to the brand and is made up of former Toys “R” Us executives. The name Tru Kids is a play on the famous line sung in its advertising (“We don’t wanna grow up, we are Toys ‘R’ Us Kids”). According to Digiday.com, “A rebuilt Toys ‘R’ Us would have to graft an old name on to a completely new model that favors smaller, boutique, experience-based stores. It’s a shift that’s challenging for big-box brands that once focused on large-format stores with a breadth of inventory.”
Technology to Dominate Trends for In-Store Retail in 2019
It’s still early in the year, so we thought we’d fill you up with a few more trends for 2019. Over at Forbes.com, retail Senior Contributor Andria Cheng recently reported technology will continue to be the way brick-and-mortar retailers disrupt Amazon.com. among the ideas, drones and robots will become “new employees” on shopping floors. “The retail shelf is like a black hole. There is no automation knowing what is on the shelves. We are trying to change that,” said Richard Schwartz, president and CEO of Pensa Systems, a manufacturer of drones that track store-shelf inventory.
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DMM e-News - Issue #151
