This lovely gift from Royal Copenhagen is a great example of how packaging can work as an extension of your store’s identity.  For starters, the color scheme reflects the brand’s characteristic blue and white, based on the company’s signature hand-painted porcelain.  The design on the paper echoes the designs that Royal Copenhagen made famous. The… Read More

Keeping customers coming through the doors is a challenge for stores large and small.  According to a post-Black Friday Associated Press article, a JC Penney branch in NJ “was trying to make shopping in person more exciting with a DJ in the store.”  The accompanying photo implies that this attempt may not have been a… Read More

The holiday season is about to start in earnest, which means that for most of us there will be many more shoppers in the store than normal.  All of our preparation — buying merchandise, hiring and training staff, creating displays and promotions — culminate in these busy few weeks of sales. To use a sports… Read More

The Chicago Botanic Garden is one of our favorite places to visit.  We have been there in the winter, spring, summer and fall, and found that with the changing seasons there is always something new to see. But this year we stopped by in November, on a day that fell in between fall and winter. … Read More

My favorite subject back in first grade was called show and tell.  This grade school version of Toastmasters encouraged even the shyest children to get up and talk about something they’d brought from home.  Perhaps it was the future retailer in me that made me curious about what the other kids found attractive in the… Read More

“Past due” are not happy words to hear when it comes to invoices from your vendors.  At this time of year, as we build inventory for the hopefully busy holiday season, it is easy to fall short of funds.  How can you pay all these bills as they come due? Ideally, you have planned ahead… Read More

It’s an almost irresistible heading on a website: Testimonials.  Click on the link, and you get to see nice things said about the business by people we assume are real, even though they are often just identified by a first name and last initial.  These testimonials are short, heartwarming and sometimes witty — and we… Read More

Have you heard about the latest blurring of lines between online purchases from Amazon and the bricks and mortar world of retailing? Starting this month, Kohl’s has announced that customers will be able to use 82 of their locations for BARIS — my term for Buy from Amazon, Return in Store. In an official statement,… Read More

You may have never heard of Farfetch, but the site achieves approximately 10 million visits per month, and ships to customers in almost 190 countries. The global luxury fashion platform (“The world’s greatest selection of luxury”) was established in 2007 by José Manuel Ferreira Neves, a British-based Portuguese businessman. In an interview in The Daily… Read More

The busiest shopping day of the year is traditionally said to be the day after Thanksgiving, dubbed Black Friday in honor of stores “getting in the black” and making a profit starting that day. Those of us who love the origin of words and phrases will be interested to know that Black Friday actually started… Read More