Marketing Tactics

Consumers aren’t ready to let go of print coupons.   A majority (58%) of respondents reported using more print coupons over the past year, according to the 2016 Purse String Survey by Valassis. Thirty-eight of respondents said the same about mobile coupons and 32% are using online coupons or coupon codes more often.  

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. 

Online retail sales continue to grow as changing shopper behavior places greater expectations on brick-and-mortar retail. Despite this trend, store-based retailing remains more profitable than direct-to-consumer retailing, largely due to the high cost of free shipping and returns associated with online sales.   

At the Converse Store on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, “customization maestros” help sneaker fans manufacture their dream shoe.   

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.