Entries tagged 'retail'

Why CVS and Target Locking Up Products Is Backfiring - Bloomberg

None of that larceny is going to be thwarted by turning stores into plexiglass wastelands. But for the segment of theft happening off shelves, is putting products behind barriers an effective prevention measure? Although actual data is scarce, the answer seems to be yes. But that yes comes with significant caveats. Locking up merchandise “does work in the sense that it reduces theft” in the most basic way possible, says GlobalData’s Saunders. “The problem is it also reduces sales.”

I found this to be a really well-reported and balanced piece on the (growing) practice of locking up products by retailers.

This is something we always struggled with at our store. We were required by state law to have spray paint either behind a counter or in locked cases, but everything we did beyond that was prompted by our own experience. Paint markers were locked up or behind our counter. Expensive sets were behind our counter. We had a line of oil paint in stick form (“pigment sticks”) that were locked up. We came close to putting doors on an expensive line of oil paints.

We were a small business so we didn’t have great numbers on shoplifting. The monetary value of what was stolen was not a significant factor in our closing, but having to worry about it and manage it absolutely was. Arguing with customers about whether they had to leave their bag at our counter, or whether someone was “following them around,” is awful. Sometimes we caught shoplifters red-handed and had to worry about how they would react when they were confronted. I was threatened with a gun once, and we had several physical altercations over the years. Sometimes we noticed an item was missing after the fact and were able to pull video footage of it being stolen by a frequent customer. It was all soul-crushing, in aggregate.

So much of society just feels totally unsustainable right now, so put this down as one part of it.

Amazon and Walmart: Are the trade-offs we make to shop there worth it? - Vox

What you do with Amazon is actually not shopping; it’s buying. Largely, it’s a very transactional relationship that people have with it. Every so often, there’s an Amazon dress or Amazon whatever, but usually, you’re being sent to the site for some very specific reason. You’re transacting, you’re fulfilling some desire or need. But the idea that you’re browsing or enjoying yourself or window shopping or getting some kind of entertainment value is something they’ve been terrible at. And they’ve tried for years. They’re best at selling stuff that lends itself to transactions and not shopping.

this is a great observation, and i wonder how we could be shifting our website to encourage more shopping and not just buying. or maybe that’s a fool’s errand, we should just streamline the buying as much as possible and focus our time and energy on our in-store experience.

i am not really a sneakerhead, but i’m out on the periphery of it and as someone with an interest in retail and small business, i followed the news about how nike pulled out of retailers to focus on direct-to-consumer sales. the news now is that nike is re-engaging with at least some of the retailers it had left, including dsw and macy’s. “Nike’s Wholesale Pivot: A Masterclass In Omnichannel Strategy” posits that they took advantage of the pandemic chaos to reset their relationships, which looks pretty plausible.

the impact and implentation of direct-to-consumer sales is a big issue in the art supply industry and i don’t know if there is any company in particular that i would point to as having figured out the best balance.

saeed farkhondehpour, developer of the medallion at 4th and main in downtown los angeles, plans to challenge the downtown women’s center’s plans to open a second-hand store because he thinks “a lot of people will not want to come shop near secondhand stores.”

so the toy district, where you can find blocks of stores selling nearly the exact same items, would somehow be tarnished by a second-hand store run by a non-profit organization in a space that is currently just a building behind an iron fence.

yeah, i don’t buy it.

famima!! is becoming the abc store of downtown los angeles.