Carol Spieckerman's Brain On ... The Shops at Target

In her latest contribution as a Retail Wire panelist, Carol gives cautious kudos to Target for creating a 2.0 version of its often-aped, limited edition brand strategy.

Read the full discussion

Here's what she had to say ... I'm glad to see that Target finally stepped up with a 2.0 version of its limited availability brand strategy. This one checks quite a few boxes.

1. Exclusivity - Critical when price transparency is pervasive.
2. Traffic - Frequent brand launches drive looky loos.
3. Reputation - Supporting, not annihilating, small business.
4. Brand Boost - "The Shops at Target" moniker rolls up to Target, regardless of which brands are being featured.
5. Frequency (and fun) - Treasure hunts turn on trips (just ask Costco).

My only concern is that, unlike the growing number of online marketplaces, Target isn't just passively granting space to third party sellers, they are actively managing the execution of a revolving door of new brands, in multiple categories, under tight-ish time constraints, and with companies not used to executing under a large-scale wholesale model.

If it comes together, this will be a nice addition to Target's bag of tricks.

New Year Brings Decision Time

Thomas Lee of the Minneapolis Star Tribune asked Carol Spieckerman to weigh in on where retail will go in the New Year . . .

In 2012, less will be more, according to retail expert Carol Spieckerman.

Struggling chains like Sears, Christopher & Banks, and Gap will continue to shut down stores to save cash. At the same time, retailers like Wal-Mart, Target and Best Buy will experiment with smaller formats instead of building big-box stores, said Spieckerman, president of newmarketbuilders, a retail management-consulting firm based in Bentonville, Ark., home of Wal-Mart.

As consumers continue to flock to online shopping, traditional brick-and-mortar retailers have been seeking less-costly areas of growth instead of spending gobs of money on 125,000-plus-square-foot boxes.

Best Buy, based in Richfield, is rolling out Best Buy Mobile stores, while Minneapolis-based Target experiments with CityTarget in dense cities like San Francisco, Seattle, and Los Angeles. The smaller stores, which focus more on everyday essentials, are about half the size of normal Targets.

Still if shoppers also subscribe to the less-is-more philosophy, the economy could continue its anemic growth. Consumer spending accounts for about 70 percent of economic activity.

Read the full article.

Copyright © 2011 Star Tribune

Rethinking Retail Scale and Moving Beyond Multi-channel: Carol Spieckerman's Latest for LIMA

Not that long ago, retailers ran their online and offline operations in silos. In many cases, they actually competed against themselves in different channels. This is a less-talked-about advantage that Apple has held over traditional retailers ever since it opened its first stores in 2001 – Apple understood that it didn’t matter where transactions happened because every touch point along the way kept shoppers engaged with the Apple brand (and, of course, the real brand engagement began when shoppers took the shiny objects home).

These days, retailers from mass to class see all channels — including mobile — as synergistic and seamless touch points with shoppers and, along the way, scale has been redefined. Retailers’ new criteria for scale are no longer thousands of stores, but they aren’t millions of online impressions or mobile transactions either – it’s all of these combined.
Read the rest of the article

Is Target's Proposition Played Out?

Carol Spieckerman weighs in on Target's fading appeal in Business Week.

Why Target’s Cheap-Chic Glamour Is Fading: the Discount Retailer Confronts Slower Growth and Image Problems

BY: MATT TOWNSEND - BUSINESSWEEK, September 22, 2011

©2011 BLOOMBERG L.P. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.