We once knew a lady who steadfastly championed the idea that Labor Day should be considered New Year's Eve, and the Tuesday after Labor Day as the start of the New Year. (Yes, she was ahead of her time in many other ways as well.)

Here's her reasoning about the "real" New Year's Eve: as summer fades away and vacations end, the new school year starts up; the baseball season pennant race is on; football games begin. 

As all this happens, she explained, most people take on a renewed sense of energy. 

The promise of a fresh start is everywhere. Optimism abounds!

Take A Minute. Check Out These Two Charts. What Do You See?

This shows the average annual pre-tax income (in 2022) and average expenditures, for US total, and by generation.

 

And this chart shows total US population by generation, by age in 2022.

You may be looking at the future of retailing

Granted, everyone in retailing who looks at these two charts from the Collage Group* will conclude something different. Didn’t you?!

This Is Outrageous

An article in the Retail Dive Brief* on August 5 jumped out at us with some fright. (We’ll get to what concerns us greatly in a moment.) Here's what was shared: As reported by Max Garland, Amazon Merchants who use Fulfillment By Amazon are advised to send their holiday inventory to Amazon during August and September, to arrive no later than October 19, a week earlier than last year. (And six weeks in advance of Black Friday.) And Garland cautioned, "Sellers who miss the October inventory receiving deadline may have tough luck finding space at Amazon’s fulfillment centers." But merchants need not worry. (And this is what concerned us.) Amazon can assure that "sellers will have enough room for six months of inventory on average." 👀

Bold Way To Improve Productivity 

As we look around, we see a popular cost-saving and productivity-boosting tactic being instituted by many national retailers, shopping malls, and restaurants. They are open fewer hours. 

This offers an opportunity for you to revisit your store hours and employee scheduling practices. Maybe it's time to consider some changes, if you haven't already. 

Your customers have voted with their feet. Your goal is to see what patterns there are in their shopping visits. (This could be a fine project for a summer employee home from college.)

Start small; focus on , say, the last four weeks of data collected by your POS system. But this time, produce reports by the day of the week. Yep, seven columns of data. Wait till you see what it can reveal!

Use This Four-Day-Fourth To The Max!

Get "Freedom" From Old Merchandise

Find out how revolutionizing it can be to have freedom from old merchandise!

This year, the stars align. The 4th of July is on a Thursday!

We see it as a gift for retailers from the calendar gods. Four days, Thursday through Sunday. What a great opportunity for a true blow-out sale event!

Perhaps you saw that recent article* in The Wall Street Journal. As Ruth Simon reported, "The cost pressures squeezing small businesses – and their need to pass along those higher charges – help explain why inflation has been so stubborn."

• Over 80% of small business owners cited rising labor costs as the greatest impact on their cost of doing business.
   
• Two-thirds of owners identified the rising costs of Commercial Insurance, Goods/Inputs, and Employee Benefits (including health insurance) as most significant. (see chart**)

Retailers are caught by these tough uncontrollables, whether dealing with customers or employees.

A couple weeks ago, we received another very insightful email from a long time professional friend. Because of his unique perspective on retailing, we’re sharing a portion of his note.

First, you must understand that our friend had owned one of the finest specialty stores in the Midwest for years. Then, for the last ten years, he chose to work in sales for a prominent national retailer. He’s probably forgotten more about the nuances of retailing excellence than any of us even know.

We think you’ll agree with our friend. And probably recognize your own experiences.

“Yes, lots of challenges for xxxx and pretty much any retailer these days. They are wrestling with some legacy issues as well as societal issues like Millennials’ and Gen Z's general distrust of institutional authority and unhappiness with the hand they've been dealt.”

Ahh, springtime! A time for new beginnings, fresh starts.

Spring also is a time for "Spring Cleaning" – that time of year to spruce up, clean up, fix up. Sigh! Another chore.

This year, here's how to break out of that another-to-do-task rut.

It starts by seeing your stores the way your shoppers see them. Then, with that awareness, the spruce up, clean up, fix up tasks can actually focus on attracting and appealing to your very best customers. 

And we have the (free!) tool to make all this happen.