Marketing Tactics

A look at brands and categories that are growing

I read CSA editor-in-chief Marianne Wilson’s recent “From the Editor’s Desk” column (page 8, March 2015 issue, Chain Store Age) with great interest. Her piece — “The store is back (even though it never left)” — touched on the topic of brick-and-mortar retail expansion and “the relevance of offline retail in an omnichannel world.”

The article got me thinking in more detail about the retail expansion we are seeing in 2015. What brands are growing?

Vernon, Calif. -- True Religion Apparel Inc. has opened its first global flagship, at 513 Broadway in downtown Manhattan. The 3,000-sq.-ft. space is the brand’s largest and most digitally-savvy store to date, starting with storefront windows that display a continuous stream of video content. The windows are also able to showcase style statements from shoppers themselves.

Inside the store, digital kiosks and iPads provide product-on-demand by offering the entire True Religion collection through an endless digital aisle.

The way retailers light their stores is experiencing a major transformation as more and more retailers adopt LED lighting solutions. The experts at PowerSecure Lighting (powersecurelighting.com) spoke with Chain Store Age about LED lighting trends and LED retrofits.

What is the biggest trend you are seeing in retail lighting?

The shift to LED lighting.

Walmart is schooling students in Virginia on savings with the latest iteration of its on campus concept store first introduced in 2011.

The new 4,100-sq.-ft. Walmart on Campus is located at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. The store opened April 29 and is part of an ongoing pilot program at Walmart to designed to provide VCU students and faculty, as well as the surrounding neighborhood, more convenient access to affordable products.

Austin, Texas - Whole Foods Market and Instacart are partnering to make it more convenient to show Mom how much you love her this Mother’s Day. Using the Instacart service, Whole Foods will deliver flowers in as little as one hour across 15 major U.S. metros, along with a selection of other gifts.

With the one year anniversary of Walmart’s Saving Catcher app approaching, the executive who led its development is slated to give an update on what’s next for the price comparison app at a May 14 event in Bentonville.

Greg Chandler, senior marketing director of customer engagement at Walmart, is the featured speaker at an upcoming meeting of Doing Business in Bentonville. Chandler is scheduled to speak on the topic of “Walmart mobile retail – how Savings Catcher is changing the way Walmart things about digital retail.”

Major shopping center openings in 2014 beg the question, “Are we back on track?”

Last year may be the first 365-day period since the Great Recession that there is enough new shopping center space to crow about.

Chain Store Age’s annual development survey — spanning 26 years — reported pretty spotty new-build efforts from 2009 to 2013, but in 2014 some significant projects opened.

Whole Foods Market and Instacart are partnering to make it more convenient to show Mom how much you love her this Mother’s Day.