Less than three years ago, I was part of a consulting team that participated in a strategic planning retreat for Art Van Furniture’s senior management. At the time (mid 2017), the company was riding high: it was immensely profitable, growing fast, entering new markets and…
As the Holiday season of 2019 winds to an end, I am going to use this time to look back and to look ahead. The 2010’s were a transformative decade for retail. While Retailmageddon didn’t exactly come to pass, we saw a significant slowdown in…
In one of the most anticipated bankruptcies in some time, Forever 21 officially declared Chapter 11 over the weekend, adding to the list of large retailers who have retrenched their store base or fully closed down in 2019. While many argue whether we are officially…
In July, I wrote about Starbucks announcement that they were shuttering all 379 Teavana units by the end of 2018. The roots of that story were more firmly centered on Starbucks dubious success in acquiring companies with Teavana costing them $620 million in 2012. An…
Premium kitchen and bath retailer Pirch is retrenching, with plans to close stores in Chicago, Austin (already closed), Paramus and Atlanta by the end of September. This would leave the company with its four California stores, which they state are growing and profitable as well…
In an effort to refocus resources on high-performing stores and improve its online shoppingexperience, Macy’s announced recently that it will close 100 stores, thus reducing the retailer’s total brick-and-mortar footprint by about 15 percent. The company will shutter these stores—whose specific locations they have yet…
