Marketing Tactics

Sephora has debuted its high-tech, high-service Beauty Tip Workshop format on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue.    The 10,040-sq.-ft. store offers an array of classes, group as well as one-on-one makeovers and boasts a number of innovations, including a new digital makeover guide.   Click here for more. 

High-quality, graphically interesting store barricades can turn an unsightly construction or remodeling site into a brand-enhancing billboard for a retailer. Chain Store Age spoke with Bob Putnam, the president and founder of Boston Barricade Company, about the evolving nature of retail construction barricades.
    
How have retail construction barricades changed over the years?

Thirty years ago, 98% of all retail barricades were constructed using metal framing and drywall. But today, that number is down to 35%.

Detroit is not the only town that spent the past few decades building outward before looking inward. In June, the Las Vegas City Council approved a master plan for its Downtown district, focusing on both historic attractions and new development to drive more traffic there.

To make it happen, it hired RTKL, an architecture and urban design firm whose completed projects include Mirdif City Centre in Dubai and L.A. Live. Its plan calls for the establishment of a tech business center, expansion of its health care services and at least 5,000 new residents.

More and more these days, shopping center developers find themselves in the role of town planner. Once dedicated to creating pleasant spaces for people to shop in, they now are challenged to create places for people to live, play, eat and be entertained in. Build that, they’re told, and shoppers will come. But droves of millennials fleeing suburbs in search of more fulfilling urban lifestyles are giving developers an assist. In some cases, they’re hewing their own downtowns out of rough old sections of town. In others, old downtowns are remaking themselves to welcome this new city stock.

Beauty and skin-care figure prominently in Kohl’s multi-year turnaround plan.   The retailer recently finished adding beauty departments to all its stores, the Dallas Morning News reported, and even managed to do it couple years ahead of schedule.  

My face and name may be unfamiliar to you, but hopefully that will soon change. I have covered retail for decades, never retail real estate. But, I am happy to have landed in this spot. For, just as retailers need new traffic to thrive and grow, so do writers need new material, and this beat is rife with material.

Here’s what excites me about this space. It’s something I trust also excites — and perhaps scares — you retailers and developers out there. You are America’s new town planners.

The Summit at Fritz Farm has signed CRU Food & Wine bar to a growing roster of gourmet dining establishments at the $156 million project under construction in Lexington, Kentucky.   The Summit, scheduled to open next spring, will feature 1 million-sq.-ft. of retail, 306 apartments, a boutique hotel, and 48,000 sq. ft. of Class A office space, according to developer Bayer Properties.   

Kirkland’s reported a second-quarter loss that was larger than expected as it lowered its outlook for the year.   The home goods retailer lost $3.6 million in the quarter ended July 30, compared with a loss of $2.3 million in the year-ago period.   Net sales for the quarter increased 6.7% to $123.0 million. Same-store sales, including e-commerce sales, decreased 4.3%.