Retail Unwrapped is a weekly podcast series hosted by our Chief Strategist Shelley E. Kohan. Each week, they share insights and opinions on major topics in the retail and consumer product industries. The shows are a lively conversation on industry-wide issues, trends, and consumer behavior.
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Retail media is a money grab dressed up as innovation. The industry likes to talk about enhancing the shopper journey, but what gets these programs funded is squeezing incremental trade dollars out of CPG brands already stretched thin by tariffs, climate changes that affect supplies, a war in Iran that is increasing transportation and farming costs, and a retailer’s own margin pressure. No shopper…
Gen Z is turning to the comment sections for trusted product recommendations. A recommendation from a regular person is more authentic than an ad from a brand. Part of the appeal is that these unsponsored recommendations feel more genuine, less polished, and often way more entertaining than traditional ads.
Luxury brands are recognizing the strategic importance of cruises by investing in experiences that combine “being” with “having” in a distinctive retail environment. Cartier, IWC Schaffhausen, and Piaget offer private retail spaces, exclusive viewings, and in-suite appointments aboard Luminara, a superyacht in The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection.
The first thing you learn, especially in the military, is if you make an investment and it's not working, then you have to make tough decisions quickly and iterate. In business, as difficult as it is to make certain decisions, if it’s right for the business, it's right for your stakeholders, and it's right for you as a leader.
You've got to admit: Ryan Cohen, the CEO of GameStop, always thinks big and lives large. His attempt to take over eBay—a company at least four times bigger than his—was pretty outrageous.
Listen in as Shelley and Eliot reveal how the Orton family has resisted the temptation compromise their values in a screen-driven, digital marketplace. Their conversation gives a voice to deeply held values, classic, wearable clothes, and a retail ethos (including a customer bill of rights) that survives the test of time.
It is mind-boggling that a vertically integrated direct-to-consumer industry disruptor, generating 70 percent margins on a brilliantly conceived offering, ended up selling it for pennies on the dollar. But honestly, how many people want to buy a $15,000 bed?
A lot of companies think that loud and messy and customizable and, honestly, an unserious aesthetic proves a human actually made it. Packaging with the low-fi, Nickelodeon slime-esque aesthetic of hyper goo maximalism is the perfect in-group signifier to make next gen impulse purchases move.
Three companies built and sold with more than $200 million in sales. Refreshingly honest, T says part of her career trajectory is that she’s simply “not particularly employable.” She’s been disruptive her whole life, approaching everything with curiosity and imagination, never bound by how “something is supposed to be done.”
The boom and bust of Korea's AI-fuelled financial markets could be foreshadowing a wider global meltdown. The way its digital natives are dealing with their reversed fortunes could also be a leading indicator of how the rest of the world’s consumers will cope.
