Two of America’s top 10 most productive retailers are Canadian. Tracking annual sales per square foot, market research company eMarketer evaluated over 225 retailers. The top one is no surprise: Apple Stores boast yearly sales exceeding $4,500 per square foot. Of the two Canadian-based retailers, one also made it into America’s top 15 fastest growing store footprints. 

Vancouver-based yoga wear retailer Lululemon ranked fifth for America’s most productive retail space, with sales averaging US$1,841 per square foot. Lululemon’s productivity is exceeded by Apple, Murphy, Tiffany & Co., and Michael Kors stores. Lululemon has about 175 American retail locations, 38 showrooms, 8 outlets and 9 pop-up locations. In Canada, Lululemon has 46 stores, 1 showroom, 2 outlets, and 5 pop-up locations. Although there are more American Lululemon stores than Canadian, its top-selling location is at West Edmonton Mall. 

Montreal-based jeweller Birks Group (formerly Birks & Mayors) came in 9th place with annual American sales of $1,224 per square foot. In the United States, Birks Group retails under the name Mayors, with 16 Florida stores, 3 in Georgia, and one Rolex watch boutique in Orlando. In Canada, the company operates 28 Maison Birks stores, 2 Brinkhaus boutiques (in Vancouver and Calgary) and 1 wedding-focussed concession at Toronto’s flagship Hudson’s Bay. 

Lululemon also ranked 12th in the study’s list of expanding retailers, with an American square footage increase of 22.9% over the previous year. 

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By Lisa McCann

Are your employees engaged or are they leaving after less than a year?

Every organization struggles with employee engagement. But have you ever attributed a disengaged staff with hiring the wrong types of people from the get go? Companies customarily focus on growing employee engagement once a new hire has started. Often, disregarding the opportunity to measure and predict the likelihood of an employee’s engagement level BEFORE a hire is made.

Employee turnover is often overlooked as just another industry norm. We often hear companies say their turnover is on par with industry standards. For some of those industries, such as retail or hospitality, their turnover can be as high as 80%. These types of organizations frequently see employees churning every few months and sometimes as often as every few weeks. Why would you want to match industry norms that are so outlandishly high?

If you could predict the likelihood of someone turning over because of engagement before you even hired them, think of the recruiting and training costs your organization could be saving with every new hire you make.

Stop focusing solely on growing employee engagement.

Address the issue of engagement in a new light, start hiring for engagement traits that can be predicted. Employee engagement is often attributed to a company’s ability to grow engagement within its workforce. Consider adding in assessment measures within your recruitment process that can help predict selecting engaged workers from the get go. By blending both measuring engagement pre hire and growing engagement post hire, you can optimize your hiring results to find better employees.

Start focusing on measuring engagement traits.

Assessments can predict whether candidates will become involved with, committed to and motivated at work. We use a measure called “Eager to Engage” that measures a potential employee’s self-report on how engaged they see themselves and predicts their on the job performance. Our partners at HirePayoff have seen a new growing trend within leadership and the importance they place on assessing engagement levels before a hire is made.

“Operating leadership views the concept of screening candidates for employee engagement as critical in today’s hiring. In fact, operations leaders indicate far more interest in screening candidates in these areas, than for the classic skill and ability competencies that frame typical candidate testing programs. Many operating leaders say it’s more “Will Do” engagement than “Can Do” competency in a candidate that shows itself once onboard.” 

                                                    – Dr. David Jones, Author of Million Dollar Hire

Lisa McCann is the Corporate Marketing Manager at Vancouver-based recruitment company, Mindfield Group.

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By Steven P. Dennis

“Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” 

– Mark Twain*

Media reports highlight the dramatic shift of spending from traditional stores to e-commerce. Industry analysts and pundits predict the demise of brands with substantial investments in retail real estate. We live in an increasingly virtual world, they say, and those with deep roots in the physical realm are starting to look more and more like dinosaurs.

The transformation of shopping fueled by all things digital is profound with no signs of deceleration. The crazy little thing called the internet is changing virtually (pun intended) everything. But anyone who thinks that brick and mortar stores are going away has it wrong. Here’s why.

Brick and mortar retail can enhance the value proposition. Physical retail offers many important advantages–the ability to see and try on products, instant gratification, face-to-face customer service, social interaction and so on–that digital selling cannot readily replicate.

Purchase events matter. There is a reason that e-commerce penetration in many product categories remains low. Where the risk of buying online is perceived as high (apparel, many big ticket items), direct-to-consumer shares remain in the single digits. Brands like Zappo’s have innovated in customer service to overcome some of e-commerce’s limitations, but long-term growth potential is modest. In fact, e-commerce darlings like Bonobos, Nasty Gal and Warby Parker have begun to broaden their reach–and address flattening growth–by opening physical stores. Plenty of products–particularly perishables and low-priced items–also have underlying economic reasons why direct selling volume will remain constrained.

Consumer segments matter. Great customer intimate brands embrace the notion of treating different customers differently. When you do this, you understand the different needs, wants and behaviours of varied customer types. Depending on the product and the particular consumer, the purchase journey may begin and end at a physical store. For others, they will never set foot in a brick & mortar location. Others will research online and buy in store. You get the idea. Your mission is to understand the role your physical locations play in being intensely relevant and remarkable for the customers you need to attract, retain and grow. Then build out and customize the experience accordingly.

The blended channel is the only channel. Stop thinking channels and start thinking about a consistent, integrated customer experience for your brand. Other than products and experiences that can be delivered completely digitally, the majority of retail purchases are influenced by both the digital and physical realms. More and more data is emerging to confirm this. Your mileage will vary, but silo-ed thinking, organizations, incentives and metrics confuse, rather than illuminate.

Frictionless commerce is essential. Let’s be blunt: there’s more heat than light in the discussion of omni-channel capabilities. Strategically, the key is to hone in on how to be differentiated, relevant and remarkable for the customers you wish to serve. And then you must root out the sources of friction in your customer experience. With more consumers going back and forth between digital and physical channels in their decision journey, if you don’t make it easy to do business with you chances are there is a competitor who is ready to pounce.

Mobile adds value to physical retail. When e-commerce was either sitting at your home or office surfing the web, the distinction between digital and brick & mortar really meant something. Now with consumers untethered and having increasingly powerful devices with them 24/7, mobile becomes the great integrator–and makes the distinction between e-commerce and brick & mortar less relevant all the time.

Seismic changes ARE impacting retail. With the exception of companies in the early stages of maturity, most retailers need fewer stores and many of the stores they have will need to be smaller. But assuming that physical retail is going away any time soon is just plain wrong. The tendency to isolate e-commerce and brick & mortar performance is equally misguided.

Amazon and a handful of best-in-class e-commerce companies will continue to thrive. And new pure play digital models will undoubtedly emerge to captivate consumers and gobble up share.

But there is plenty of business to be done in physical stores. Less, but still plenty. And most of the growth in what is counted as e-commerce is not a shift to online-only brands, but rather to brands that have cohesive omni-channel strategies. Think Nordstrom and Macy’s so far. For them, stores are assets, not liabilities. But the way brick and mortar retail drives consumer engagement and loyalty is morphing quickly.

These emerging winners follow a simple but compelling formula:

• More focused.
• More differentiated.
• More relevant.
• More remarkable.
• More personalized.
• More integrated.
• See you in the blur.

* This isn’t, apparently, the actual quotation, but one that has become part of his folklore.

Steven Dennis is a senior omni-channel retail executive and strategic growth advisor at SageBerry Consulting , LLC. . He is also a Former Chief Strategy Officer at Neiman Marcus. [More about Steven P. Dennis]

Published with permission. This post originally appeared at Steven P. Dennis’ Blog on May 15, 2014. Copyright 2014. Follow Steven P. Dennis’ Blog on Twitter.

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