News

Retailers continue their efforts to step up design investments to improve the customer experience, but they should also focus on investing in customer safety.

That message was driven home during the SPECS session, “Safe Stores: Design Ideas to Help Customers Feel Safer” Speaker Andrew McQuilkin, retail leader at BHDP Architecture, explained that recent “active” shootings — when individuals actively attempt to harm people in confined, populated areas — have targeted formerly “safe areas,” including malls.

As digital commerce forces brick-and-mortar stores to innovate, industry experts share their views on the future of physical retail.

From department stores to discounters to home improvement chains, nearly all retailers are engaged in the same game: trying to imagine what stores of the future will look like in an increasingly digitized world.

Broker Faith Hope Consolo, who’s placed countless retail businesses in some of Manhattan’s best neighborhoods, has lately turned her attention to Harlem. She’s happy to note that restaurants and national retail brands are blossoming uptown, but that – outside of a Whole Foods opening on 125th Street – full-size supermarkets are nonexistent since the Pathmark closed there last year. And it’s not just a Harlem phenomenon.

Want to stay ahead of the competition — or at least keep pace with it? Invest in a tech lab — or an accelerator.

With the pressure to innovate greater than ever, savvy retailers understand they can no longer wait for new solutions and technologies to be proven in the field. That’s why so many of them have invested in tech labs (aka “retail innovation labs”).

Menswear retailer bullish on Internet of Things, RFID

While most retailers continue to dip their toes in the Internet of Things waters, Thomas Pink has jumped in with both feet — and is seeing results.

The luxury menswear brand is involved in an IoT proof-of-concept test at its store on Wall Street in downtown Manhattan. Using a cloud-based IoT platform from Acuitas Digital, the retailer has the backbone it needs to seamlessly integrate networking, hardware, software and analytics solutions — all necessary pieces to digitize the physical store.

There’s been a reorganization at Whole Foods Market.   On Wednesday, the natural-foods retailer named a new chairwoman and five new independent directors, effective immediately. It also appointed a former Kohl’s executive as CFO.   The changes come as activist investors and restless shareholders have been demanding Whole Foods accelerate the turnaround its business. The board shakeup came on the same day as the retailer released second quarter earnings that met analysts’ expectations. 

The nation's largest rent-to-own operator has a new chief operating officer.     Rent-A-Center appointed Joel M. Mussat as executive VP, COO, effective May 5, 2017. He brings more than 20 years of experience in operations, retail strategy and the rent-to-own industry.