Insights

Retailers are fighting to engage customers and keep them from going elsewhere. And smart retail marketers know that nurturing existing customers to increase lifetime value is the fastest, highest-ROI route to near-term revenue growth.

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For Pet Supplies Plus, it’s all about convenience and service. The third-largest specialty player in a fast-growing business that has proven resilient even in hard times, the privately held retailer has found a sweet spot amid bigger box competitors with its friendly neighborhood-store positioning.

Today, when it comes to adding new members to your board of directors, creating a balance between industry experience and innovation is extraordinarily important.    Filling board seats with industry veterans and compliance experts may feel comfortable in the short term. But, to adapt to today's savvy and demanding consumer, companies must be more forward thinking.  

Over the last 12 annual trips I’ve made to Las Vegas for ICSC’s RECon real estate convention (which officially makes me a rookie in this industry of 20-, 30- and 40+-year veterans), I have always been able to detect some distinct trends.  

That doesn’t as much make me a trend-watcher as it does a good listener.  The retailers and shopping center operators and brokers who attend RECon each year tend to talk avidly in the aisles about the current events shaping the retail real estate industry.

For anyone looking at the current state of retail in the Midwest, one of the most fascinating things to track is how some of the macro trends we see in the marketplace today are the end result of years (sometimes decades) of evolutionary change.
 

Retail has been the foundation of shopping centers throughout their existence, but new entertainment concepts are making inroads in traditional retail venues.
 

Retail mergers have long been subject to scrutiny by the antitrust authorities at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). But perhaps no two retail chains have found themselves more often in the FTC’s cross-hairs than the two largest office supply providers in the United States, Staples and Office Depot.