Nextopia created this very interesting infographic on e-commerce in Canada, including its projected sales of $34 billion by the year 2016. Canadians are increasingly shopping online, with sales growing substantially year-over-year. The infographic shows the biggest spenders by province, how many of us shop online, what products we buy, and how we compare to other countries.
[Link to original Nextopia infographic]
Photo: Holt Renfrew
Christian Dior‘s fourth Canadian boutique has opened within Holt Renfrew at Toronto’s Yorkdale Shopping Centre. Featuring Dior’s updated boutique design, the concession is modelled on the interior of the brand’s Paris flagship. The shop carries primarily women’s accessories, as there are currently no Canadian Dior stores that carry women’s ready-to-wear. That will change next winter, however, when Dior’s first Canadian flagship opens at the Hotel Vancouver. A Toronto flagship is also anticipated.
Dior joins Holt Renfrew’s concessions for Louis Vuitton (4,000 sq ft), Gucci, Chanel and Prada. Lease plan: Oxford Properties, published with permission.
Dior’s other three Canadian boutiques are all shops-in-store concessions, within Holt Renfrew’s Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto (Bloor Street) stores. Montreal’s Dior concession recently renovated, despite the fact that it will close in 2017 when Holt Renfrew merges with an expanded Ogilvy store, two blocks south. Montreal’s current Holt Renfrew store will close as a result.
Dior’s first Canadian flagship will open next winter at the Hotel Vancouver. The two-level boutique will carry Dior’s women’s and men’s ready-to-wear collections, as well as accessories, children’s wear and luxury features including a private shopping salon. We’ll provide further details on Vancouver’s Dior closer to its opening date.
Dior is also shopping for flagship retail space on Toronto’s Bloor Street West, and we’ll update you when we learn of further details.
There are 11 free-standing Dior women’s ready-to-wear boutiques in 8 American cities (including 4 in Las Vegas), as well as 12 Dior accessory shops-in-store located within 9 Saks Fifth Avenue stores, 2 Bloomingdale’s stores and 1 Nordstrom store.
There’s no word yet if Dior will open within Saks Fifth Avenue’s new Canadian stores, the first of which is expected to open late next year.
*banner photo: George Pimentle for dresstokillmagazine.com
Photo: http://ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com
We published thousands of deals last July, which we’ve analyzed to offer our readers a bit of advice while planning purchases this month. And it’s a particularly important month to do so, since a number of sales will appear to be better than they actually are. In order to protect your wallet and spend your money wisely, be sure to read through our July buying guide below for everything you need to know to shop smart this month.
According to several different reports, it appears as if late August is the cheapest time to travel, both in terms of hotel pricing and airfare. Priceline.com data demonstrates that Disney World-accessible hotels are at their best during the second to last weekend. Why? This time frame falls right before Labor Day, so it’s likely a less traveled weekend; as a result, hotels and airlines push discounts to fill rooms and seats.
Speaking of cheap travel, you can maximize your savings this summer by opting for a city in which hotel pricing across the board has dropped year over year.
Last year in July, we saw an uptick in air conditioner sales and discounts. And while in some cases these models will get cheaper in August and early September, you can still save 20% or more, or as much as $150, on a unit while you need it most. And if you’re careful about how you run it, you can make up for any lost savings with a lower energy bill. (Some examples: Blocking out direct sunlight can keep the room substantially cooler naturally, while a programmable temperature control saves a full $180 a year.)
Last month, Apple debuted a cheaper iMac in its line of desktops. But while a similar strategy with the MacBook Air saw the manufacturer dropping the price and simultaneously upgrading the specs, Apple instead is offering a cheaper price because it removed some premium features in the process, including 500GB of storage and a high-end graphics card — two specs that are actually worth more than that $200 discount. If you want to pay less, we recommend instead buying an Apple-refurbished unit of the previous-generation iMac since it has a better configuration.
Summer months are generally a bad season for TV deals, but if you find yourself in dire need of a new set, there are a few categories you should look at. Off-brand 55″ LCDs, for instance, have been holding steady at $500 since January, the second-best price of the year. Look to Best Buy and Sears for deals on models from the likes of Westinghouse and RCA.
60″ LCDs, on the other hand, should be avoided at all costs. Earlier in the year prices were aggressive, ranging from $699 to $747, but for the past two months the best deals for this size category have averaged $944, which is a high we haven’t seen since 2012. Plasma sets of the same size offer a better value, averaging $626 and occasionally dropping to an all-time low of $600. Look for deals from Sears, which has offered the best bargains to date.
Finally, you may see some 32″ 1080p LCD TVs discounted as retailers begin their back-to-school sales. Currently at $189, these TVs are at their second-best rate of the year and just $9 over the best rate we’ve seen in 2014. Just keep in mind that if your college-bound student can wait until November, these sets may get even cheaper around Black Friday; last year, a freak sale marked one of these sets down to an astonishingly low price of $110!
July is expected to be a hot month for laptop deals, as back-to-school sales continue to roll out. (After all, back-to-school season is the second-best time of the year to buy a laptop.) Ultimately, you’ll get the biggest savings with touchscreen systems and mainstream 15″ laptops (equipped with Intel’s Core i5 Haswell processor and at least 4GB of RAM). The latter hit a new price low of $380 in June, about $70 below the average from the previous month. This sets a new benchmark for the category, and provides a preview of the type of deals we’ll see in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, 11″ touchscreen systems hit an all-time price low of $199 in May, a price we might see again if retailers get aggressive. Should 11″ prove too small for your needs, you can opt for a 15″ touchscreen laptop with deal prices ranging from $300 to $330.
Finally, laptops with 4K displays are slowly hitting the market. For shoppers, this means you can expect to see numerous deals on laptops with a “lesser” 1080p resolution. For the average student or home user, a 1080p laptop is more than sufficient, and the best deal we’ve seen so far for a 15″ system has been $499.
Follow @DealNews on Twitter for the latest roundups, price trend info, and stories. You can also sign up for an email alert for all DealNews features.
Nordstrom representatives won’t yet reveal what restaurants the retailer will operate in its Canadian stores. An astute Toronto-based lawyer may have found an answer, however. Anjli Patel noticed that in the April 16th Canadian Trade-Marks Journal (PDF), Nordstrom registered the Bar Verde name for use in Canada. Bar Verde is a new restaurant concept for Nordstrom, and currently operates within two California Nordstrom locations.
Bar Verde is a full-service restaurant and bar, serving lunch and dinner. Its focus is on fresh, locally-grown seasonal fare. The restaurant’s menu changes by season, four times a year. Its bar offers wine, speciality cocktails, beer, and a dedicated menu of small plates. Zagat describes Bar Verde’s lunch menu, featuring Caesar salad topped with fried Pacific oysters and yogurt dressing, Asian chopped shrimp salad, and dark cherry chicken sliders. Dinner consists of salads, flatbreads topped with wild mushrooms and truffled pecorino cheese, and entrees like roasted chicken with prosciutto and sage, oven-roasted wild salmon with black olive tapendade, and lamb with butternut squash and taleggio risotto. Nordstrom’s full restaurant menus and other dining concepts can be found here: http://restaurants.nordstrom.com.
Bar Verde’s first location opened in September of 2013 at Nordstrom’s new store in The Americana at Brand in Glendale, California. Its second location opened last November in the newly renovated Nordstrom at The Grove in Los Angeles.
We can’t confirm which Canadian Nordstrom stores will include Bar Verde locations. Sources do confirm, however, that Nordstrom’s coffee concept, eBar, will likely be found in all of its Canadian stores.
By Nima Ghodratpour
Every day, retail managers are inundated with numbers: sales, margin, conversion, operational expenses and profitability. The confusion is not helped when the corporate raison d’etre from the higher ups keeps changing from ‘increasing revenue’ to ‘reducing costs’ or ‘increasing brand equity’. In a climate where it’s hard to understand what the actual objective is many retail managers are left scratching their heads as to how to make sound managerial decisions that will guide their stores to success.
Even with the ever-changing goals and action plans, it is encouraging to know that the main objective of most retail businesses is pretty much set in stone. What actually changes is how that objective is achieved. That main objective is creating a healthy Return on Investment, or simply, making a profit.
There are many figures that retail managers monitor on daily, monthly and yearly bases. We’ve all heard the terms, units per invoice, average invoice, and sell through. These metrics are excellent at gauging how a specific aspect of the business is performing. However, what are the main drivers that managers can directly influence that will ultimately increase the profitability of a store? There are two main managerial issues and four key performance indicators (KPIs) that can directly influence and monitor to ensure increased profitability.
The first main managerial issue is all about Asset Management. Are your assets working hard for you? The entire purpose of a business investing in assets is to generate sales. When money is invested in stock, fixtures, computers or buildings, the purpose is to help the store create revenue. The two greatest assets that a company invests in that requires constant attention is the physical store and the inventory. In accounting terms it’s all about better Space and Stock management.
SPACE MANAGEMENT – A retail manager must constantly be asking themselves what is being done to improve the store’s selling potential. The KPI to look for here is the store’s Return per square foot. Managers should always be monitoring the store’s actual sales versus square footage, against, budgeted sales versus square footage looking for opportunities to increase sales for every square foot of the store. Since so much money is tied up in retail real estate, it becomes crucial that a store is ‘earning its rent’.
STOCK MANAGEMENT – The second biggest asset and subsequently where most of the stores cash is tied up in, is the inventory. When looking at inventory, what we’re really interested in is how effectively they are being used to generate sales. The most important KPI that measures effective stock management is a store’s Stock Turn. This tells us how many times a store’s stock is turned over in a year. So when your manager says, “I want to no more than 3 months of stock cover” what he is really saying is that he wants the store to maintain a yearly stock turn of four, more simply, he wants the inventory to be turned over every three months. The higher the stock turn, the more revenue is being achieved in a year compared to the amount of cash being tied up in stock. If a store strives to achieve the same amount of sales, with less forward cover, while replenishing more often with a lower volume of stock, a store’s profitability will increase exponentially, as the same sales have been achieved with less funds being tied up in stock.
A retailer has now committed to making sure that they are using their assets, namely their Space and Stock, to their full potential to generate sales by diligently monitoring the stores, Sales per square foot and Stock turn. Better asset management to generate sales is only half what is needed to ensure an increased profit. Remembering that Profit=Sales-Costs and that we now have increased our sales through proactive asset management, we must start looking at smart ways to decrease costs. Once again in accounting jargon it’s all about Cost Management and the two management issues to think about here is better Sales and Operational Cost Management.
SALES MANAGEMENT – Though we have ensured that our assets are working hard to generate sales by rigorously checking our Return per square footage and Stock turn, we can’t pat ourselves on the back yet. The mantra being choired by retail execs seems constantly to be ‘we must maintain a healthy margin’. That translates to making sure stock is sold at full price, thereby achieving maximum margin, leading to a ‘healthy’ gross profit. The KPI here is your store’s percentage of gross profit against sales. Margin really means how much contribution your are receiving per sale of an item. So if you have a shirt which retails for $100 and costs $60 your gross profit will be $40 or 40%. This means that 40% of the sale will be contributed to the operational costs and profit of your store. In that same scenario let’s say that shirt is on 15% discount, meaning it now retails for $85 the cost remains the same at $60 but the contribution per sale towards your operational costs and profit is now $25 or 25%. Small decreases in prices often require much larger increases in sales to compensate for the lower profit/contribution per sale. Therefore, as astute managers we must constantly be pushing to achieve full margin sales, by looking at our markdowns as a percentage of sales, versus, our markdowns as a percentage of budget, ensuring minimum deviation.
OPERATIONAL COST MANAGEMENT – We have now made sure that each item is contributing the maximum amount towards operational costs and profit. The next step is effectively managing our operational costs. So what is one of the biggest operational costs a retail manager must worry about? Easy, your staff! Personnel usually account for a significant portion of your operational expenses and in my opinion also constitutes the most important element in any store. The KPI to metric here is the percentage of payroll expenses versus sales, compared to percentage of payroll expenses versus budget. The key here is to ensure that each and every single member of your team is operating at 100%. A knowledgeable, involved and motivated sales associate apart of a driven sales team translates into a store being able to achieve more sales with equal or less amount of staff. Closely performance managing your team, while persistently looking to root out loss in productivity (according to statistics Canada the average Canadian worker is absent 9.3 days a year, multiple that by your average daily individual sales and you will get a pretty alarming figure of potential sales lost per employee per year) requires a great deal of follow through but will yield tremendous dividends in both the short and long run. Ensuring maximum productivity per sales associate means less money in the budget being allocated to operational expenses therefore, increasing the profitability of the store.
Its store audit day and you’re doing a floor walk with your senior manager and he or she complements you on the presentation of the product, staff and store. He or she then turns to you, with a smirk and ominously asks you, “what are some of the ways we can improve store profitably?” Without skipping a beat you answer, that you have come up with plans to improve the store’s, Space, Stock, Sales and Cost situation by measuring progress against your four KPIs namely, Sales per square foot, Stock turn, Percentage Gross Profit on Sales and Percentage of Payroll Expenses on Sales. Aside from your boss being flabbergasted, what essentially has been achieved is a structured approach to managing a profitable store. Asking yourself how to improve the Stock, Space, Sales and Cost of the store on a regular basis will accentuate when and where management action is required.
Nima Ghodratpour is an MBA candidate at Queen’s University with over 11 years of Canadian and International Luxury retail experience, working for Clinique, Bloomingdale’s and Boutique 1. Nima can be contacted at linkedin.com/in/nimaghodratpour.
Statistics Canada latest retail sales numbers for April 2014 indicate a strong gain, up a seasonally adjusted 1.1% from the previous month. On a not seasonally adjusted basis, the gain was much higher, and up 6.1% from April a year ago. Much of the reason for this however is Easter, which was in April in 2014 but in March last year. A complication is that seasonal adjustment is an estimate based on historical trends which may be off for the current year.
The 3 month year-over-year growth trend (orange line in the chart above) however takes the timing of Easter out of the picture. For total retail, it’s up 4.4% for the 3 months ending April, the strongest such gain in over 2 years, and ticking up to just above the underlying 12 month trend (green line). This appears to be a reversal of course, but it’s too early to claim a trend, especially after digging a little deeper.
Overall, the April uptick appears to be a result of unusually high sales growth at convenience stores, specialty food stores, beer, wine & liquor stores, department stores, and gasoline stations. Rather than a trend, this is more like a coincidence.
Total retail sales growth is still being driven by the Automotive & Related sector, up 7.6% versus last year for the 3 months ending April. The Food & Drug group had relatively strong sales in April, with the best single month gain in 2 years. The Store Merchandise sector however continues with only modest growth.
Health & personal care stores’ retail sales have had strong gains for the last 7 months. For the 3 months ending April 2014, sales were up 9.6% from a year ago, and this continues to shore up the overall Food & Drug sector.
Sales at supermarkets & other grocery stores however are still struggling, up just 0.1% for the 3 months ending April. In fact, their sales are down 0.1% on a 12 month basis.
In contrast, specialty food stores’ retail sales are maintaining a high growth rate. Their sales gained 9.3% for the 3 months ending April versus the same period last year.
Overall, the Food & Drug sector was up 3.2% on a 3 month basis. While not outstanding, this was still ahead of the 12 month trend of 2.1%.
Store Merchandise retail sales were up 2.9% for the month of April versus a year ago on a not seasonally adjusted basis, indicating that Easter’s timing had minimal effect. For the 3 months ending April, sales were up just 2.0%, which is below the 12 month trend of 2.7%, as per the chart below. In other words, things are slow and getting slower.
The only strong performer in this sector is other general merchandise stores, which are mostly large combo stores as distinct from conventional department stores. Their sales were up 7.8% for the 3 months ending April, which is more or less on a par with how their sales have been growing for the last 12 months.
A number of store types however had sales declines for the 3 months ending April versus a year ago: building material & garden equipment/supplies retailers, down 2.5%; miscellaneous store retailers, down 2.5%; furniture stores, down 2.1%; and shoe stores, down 1.3%.
Sales in the Automotive & Related sector were up 7.6% for the 3 months ending April, three times higher than for all other retailers combined. Current trends (see chart below) indicate some leveling off, but at a pace well above Store Retail.
Automobile dealers’ retail sales were up 6.3% for the 3 months ending April versus last year. This was stronger for used car sellers (9.6%) than for new (6.0%).
With higher prices, gasoline station retail sales were up 15.0% year-over-year in April 2014 alone, the largest increase since October 2011.
Ed Strapagiel is a consultant specializing in applied marketing, business development and strategic planning. [Ed Strapagiel’s Website]
By George Anderson, RetailWire
EBay CEO John Donahoe took to the stage at this month’s 10th annual Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition in Chicago to discuss what he calls the “commerce revolution”.
The term applies to the many ways consumers shop for products today, including going into a store to buy a product, browsing retail sites during work hours, making a purchase from a tablet while watching television at home, etc.
For too long, Mr. Donahoe said, retailers have seen various shopping behaviors through their own eyes — in channel terms — rather than seeing it from the consumer’s vantage point. “Consumers,” he said, “just want to shop.”
To demonstrate that eBay gets it, Mr. Donahoe offered several examples:
Mr. Donahoe predicts the future will bring even more “interesting combinations of online and offline” to meet consumers in the time and place they want to shop. While never mentioning Amazon.com by name, it was clear throughout much of the eBay CEO’s speech that he was drawing comparisons between his company and its chief rival. He emphasized the point at least twice during his speech, reminding the audience that eBay is “a partner, not a competitor.”
Discussion Questions: Do you agree with eBay’s John Donahoe that most retailers see the business in their own terms rather than through the lenses of consumers? Is the eBay model more responsive, as he suggests, to the needs of consumers than Amazon.com?
Ian Percy, President, The Ian Percy Corporation: All of us see everything through our own eyes — our own values, desires, experiences, fears, aspirations, and on and on. Even our attempts to determine “the customer’s perspective” are designed through our own eyes, including how we set up surveys, focus groups and the like. They’re all skewed to how we see things. For starters, which customer’s perspective are you after? Do you think there’s one, or even a hundred?
Want to know something else? We’re pathetic at it. Ask Eric Cantor’s pollsters.
IMHO, here are two of the best quotes related to considering the perspective of other people:
“Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you.” (Book of Luke)
“We judge others by their behavior and ourselves by our intentions.” (This last one is widely attributed to me, but I didn’t originate it. Can’t find who did.).
Mohamed Amer, Vice President, Global Integrated Retail Unit, SAP: As much as retail is about managing the details and speed in action, those qualities have historically focused on the store. More and more retailers are expanding that view into the digital realm with a subset working on melding the two worlds. An even smaller subset are creating new possibilities in shopping with new use cases that start with the shopper in mind and leverage technology across physical and digital. So, most retailers do recognize the shift to consumers, but that hasn’t made it through their organizations (yet).
As to eBay vs. Amazon, the former innovates around new services for both sellers and buyers (call it more exploration strategy) while Amazon focuses on scaling of existing technology investment to gain more of the shoppers’ share of wallet (call it more exploitation strategy).
Camille P. Schuster, Ph.D., President, Global Collaborations, Inc.: Most companies use an inside-out view and think about every activity as a separate area that has to be fit into the organizational chart somewhere. Then it develops as a separate activity, including e-commerce. eBay is an e-commerce company, but it is also a consumer-centric company by constantly analyzing consumer data and making decisions with consumer benefit at the center of their decisions. Other companies, such as Macy’s, are also taking a consumer-centric or outside-in approach to shopping by allowing consumers to use digital tools to shop or to shop in-store and have deliveries made from a nearby warehouse or store. Data and operations must be integrated to make that happen. Separate silos cannot achieve this process.
Ryan Mathews, Founder, ceo, Black Monk Consulting: Absolutely! I’ve been saying this for — well — decades.
Retailers seem to want to cling to the illusion that they have something customers can only get from them and which can only be purchased on their terms. Maybe that’s true if you are a Harry Winston, but if you are selling canned soup, not so much.
As to whether or not eBay is more responsive than Amazon, I’m not entirely sure where I come down on that. In fact, that part of Donahoe’s speech sounded more like a retailer’s analysis of competition than a customer’s analysis of options. For a moment it seemed he was being at least a little guilty of the same sin he was chastising other retailers for practicing.
Gene Detroyer, Professor, Independent: I don’t know if the retailers see their businesses in their own terms rather than the consumers. My sense is even when they understand the consumer lens, they reject it because they refuse to recognize that a sale is a sale is a sale, no matter where you get it. They believe that the more sales that go through an online channel, the fewer sales go through the store. That thinking makes no sense.
The objective is to sell the products, not operate the stores. The P&L doesn’t change based on where the product is sold. If $1,000,000 in revenue shifts from in-store to online and the costs of operating my stores remains the same, my bottom line doesn’t change at all.
It is the fear of losing brick and mortar sales that prevents retailers from accepting the changing consumer. This is no different than the inventor of digital photography (Kodak) ignoring the obvious to protect their film business.
Marge Laney, President, Alert Technologies, Inc.: Back in the days before the Internet, retailers could get away with offering their goods and service their way! Were there customer pain points? You bet, but the customer couldn’t do much, if anything, about it.
Enter the Internet with its explosion of choices and ways to shop, and suddenly the autocratic way of running the customer isn’t working anymore. Not only that, the customer now has visibility into every other customer’s thoughts on the subject and feels empowered.
The best part for the customer is that they are now firmly in control of their shopping experience and, if the retailer balks, they are the losers.
For retailers, customer experience investment opportunities are increasing and changing at the speed of light. Keeping up with everything is not only daunting, it can be financial suicide if the wrong investment is made.
Shep Hyken, Chief Amazement Officer, Shepard Presentations, LLC: It is not easy to put the customer in the middle of everything. You can look at companies like Zappos, Starbucks and others that are obviously customer-focused. As a result, the consumer is willing to pay more. There may be your best lesson. Find companies that are successful where the customer is willing to pay more for doing business with them than somewhere else. There’s a reason. They think like a customer and give the customer what they want — the way they want it. And they are easy to do business with.
Joan Treistman, President, The Treistman Group LLC: Retailers are human, after all, and we humans tend to see things the way we want to see them. It’s challenging to open our eyes and minds wider and process a conflicting perspective.
So John Donahoe’s comments are true, but for him the final observation must take into account what lens eBay uses. There is a proverb: “There are none so blind as those that will not see.”
Cathy Hotka, Principal, Cathy Hotka & Associates: Every retailer knows that the landscape is changing rapidly; the question is whether retail companies can evolve fast enough to survive. They’re going to need to take a fresh look at their business model (that’s you, RadioShack, with a new emphasis on same-day PC repair).
I have dinner with multiple retail CIOs a week, and every one of them believes that there will be many fewer retail stores three years from now. The revolution is upon us!
Kenneth Leung, Director of Enterprise Industry Marketing, Avaya: Retailers have always been focused on internal processes and optimizing supply chain, employee efficiency, and cost of goods sold in stores because it is manageable and controllable. It is harder to operate from a consumer lens because we as consumers are fickle and can’t articulate what we want in process flows that retailers can internalize. The fact that Amazon and eBay have taken market share from traditional retailers indicates that traditional retailers need to change; the fact is, however, that the consumers will want a mix of Amazon (ecommerce), eBay (marketplace and auction), and brick and mortar (instant discovery and gratification) going forward.
Read the entire RetailWire discussion:
http://www.retailwire.com/discussion/17585
New Juicy Couture stores will open in Canada in 2015, after the recent closure of all of the brand’s stores. The new Juicy locations will be opened by its new parent company, while its previous stores operated under the brand’s former owner. Canada’s new Juicy Couture stores will be somewhat different than its previous locations, carrying a wider variety of products and some new product categories.
Last month, we reported that Canada’s Juicy Couture stores were closing, and that several locations could re-open as Kate Spade stores. Kate Spade was the parent company of Juicy Couture, though it sold the company to brand licensing firm Authentic Brands Group last year. Authentic Brands will revive the Juicy Couture brand and according to Women’s Wear Daily, is looking to open Juicy stores in high traffic areas, with Vancouver being specifically mentioned. We expect Toronto to be a high priority for new Juicy Couture stores, as well, as it previously housed five of the company’s six Canadian locations.
According to Women’s Wear Daily, the new Juicy Couture store concept will feature the ‘world of Juicy,’ being more representative of Authentic Brand Group’s vision for the brand’s future. The concept will feature a store layout showcasing merchandise by category, giving the stores a “department store feel”. Juicy’s Black Label Collection will be available in all the new stores, and the collection will include expanded offerings in intimates, girl’s clothing, and footwear. Last week, Authentic Brands Group revealed that it had entered into a long-term partnership with Steven Madden Ltd. for a line of Juicy Couture footwear.
Authentic Brands Group is reportedly looking to open freestanding Juicy stores for girl’s clothing, as well as for intimate apparel. No word yet if Canada will see any of these new concept stores. Juicy’s new parent company will also soon relaunch its e-commerce platform, www.juicycouture.com.
Juicy’s last full-priced Canadian location, a 2,975 square foot unit at Toronto’s Sherway Gardens, closed on May 20th. Its 2,500 square foot Toronto Eaton Centre location closed on Saturday, May 17th, and its 2,250 square foot Yorkdale Shopping Centre (Toronto) and 3,500 square foot Pacific Centre (Vancouver) locations shuttered earlier this year. Its outlet location at Toronto’s Vaughan Mills, open for now, is scheduled to close on June 30th.
Juicy Couture was founded in 1995 by Gela Nash-Taylor and Pamela Skaist-Levy, and its signature tracksuit was responsible for its rapid growth and expansion.
There is no denying the drastic shift that has occurred in the way individuals are now consuming information. Mobile usage is at an all-time high with users spending more time on their mobile devices than ever before. This shift has transformed the way companies are communicating and interacting with their consumers, as well as bringing their products and services to market.
Within the recruitment space, there is an equally pronounced shift – job seekers have gone mobile.
According to a recent study conducted by LinkedIn, 74% of active candidates have viewed jobs sent to their inboxes on their mobile devices and 72% have visited a corporate careers site to learn more about an organization’s opportunities.
Companies commonly send job notification emails to potential candidate pools but fail to connect the dots after they click apply. Once a candidate receives a job notification on a mobile device, they expect the application process to be optimized and easy to complete. However, according to the same LinkedIn survey, 49% of Talent Acquisition leaders don’t view mobile recruiting as a top priority for their business.
Candidates that are seeking opportunities on their mobile or tablet devices are rarely finding an optimized experience. Creating a memorable candidate experience is just as important as creating a positive customer experience. During the application phase, candidates are looking for an easy and time sensitive process where they can input their information or upload a social profile.
The ability to seamlessly apply for an opportunity will increase conversions and build a better experience.
As mobile penetration continues to build momentum companies need to consider whether they’re willing to disregard 74% of job seekers and the methods they’re using to find new jobs.
Lisa McCann is the Corporate Marketing Manager at Vancouver-based recruitment company, MindField Group.
Upscale Swiss menswear brand Strellson will reportedly open more free-standing Canadian locations. The popular label, carried at several Hudson’s Bay stores, currently has one free-standing North American store in Toronto. Strellson is working with a Toronto-based broker to open more Canadian stores, beginning with a flagship location in Downtown Ottawa. A source at the company says other Canadian locations could also follow.
Founded in 1993, Strellson is Switzerland’s largest menswear manufacturer. Owned by Holy Fashion Group, it produces mid-to-high priced menswear (both dressy and casual), accessories and related products, targeting men in the 25 to 40 age range. It retails in about 40 countries.
According to Developers & Chains, Strellson is looking for flagship retail space in Downtown Ottawa, either within the Rideau Centre or in a high-profile street location. Strellson’s only other North American location is at 170 Bloor Street West in Toronto, at the base of the Park Hyatt Hotel at the northwest corner of Bloor Street and Avenue Road. We contacted Strellson Canada and a representative, speaking anonymously, said that the brand is considering a national store rollout, based on the brand’s success at its Toronto flagship and its success within Hudson’s Bay stores. The source would not provide confirmation, though they said that Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary and Montreal could also eventually house free-standing Strellson stores.
In 2011, a 2,400 square foot Strellson shop-in-store opened within Toronto’s flagship Hudson’s Bay on Queen Street. In November of 2012, Strellson opened its 1,700 square foot freestanding Toronto location. Sources with Strellson (and Hudson’s Bay) confirm that the label does very well in Canada, hence its plans to expand. According to Developers & Chains, Strellson is seeking Ottawa retail space in the 2,000 to 2,400 square foot range.
For information on the broker handling Strellson’s Canadian store expansion, contact Retail Insider’s Editor-in-Chief, Craig Patterson, at: insider@retail-insider.com.
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