C-SUITE

Follow These Leaders

Finally, a retail workforce story that has nothing to do with furloughs. Allow me to introduce you to retail's latest c-suite hires.

Dick’s Sporting Goods appointed Lauren Hobart, currently the retailer’s president, to replace CEO Ed Stack in February. Since Hobart signed with Dick’s in 2017, she’s led many of its winning developments, including...

• Restrategizing Dick’s e-comm approach. Of its $8.8 billion in annual sales, $1+ billion now come from e-comm.
• Identifying growth segments including private label brands and women’s apparel. 

CVS’s newly announced CEO Karen Lynch made her first hire: She selected former Crate & Barrel CEO Neela Montgomery to oversee the chain’s ~10,000 drugstores as president of CVS Pharmacy. Montgomery steered her former employer to generating 50+% of its revenue from online sales—and it’s likely she’ll bring the same omnichannel touch to CVS. 

J.Crew named Madewell president Libby Wadle to the top spot, replacing former CEO Jan Singer, who’d held the role for 10 months. Madewell has consistently grown under Wadle’s leadership—teeing the brand up for a planned, then shelved, IPO in the past year.  

Law firm New leaders Hobart, Lynch, and Montgomery inherited businesses that have comparatively thrived amid the pandemic. Wadle enters the top spot at a retailer that exited bankruptcy mere months ago, but still faces significant challenges—mainly, making clothes shoppers actually want to wear. 

Path to parity

Women make up only 29% of executives in retail, but 59% of store staff, according to Equal Employment Opportunity Commission data. That makes the above hires both major achievements and reminders of retail’s room for growth.  

• It’s about more than optics: McKinsey data show that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on leadership teams were 25% more likely to report above-average profitability than those in the bottom quartile.  

REAL ESTATE

Brands Patch Holes in Their Flagship Strategies

Style wins when the Birks and flip flops crowd can’t travel. But for flagships, life without tourists is complicated. 

Closing time: Abercrombie & Fitch shared plans yesterday to exit four more flagship locations in Europe, in addition to three previously announced 2020 flagship closures. 

• A&F first started cutting its international flagship footprint in 2019. With foot traffic down from Covid-19 closures, the retailer’s case for reducing its dependence on study abroad students strengthened.
• Now, A&F’s focusing on omnichannel experiences for “local,” aka U.S.-based, shoppers. Online sales increased 43% at the polo purveyor in Q3, and the retailer said it has a “playbook” for managing local store closures if restrictions return.

Opening day: Ugg moved into a flagship store on NYC’s 5th Avenue this week, with plans to enter “internationally curated” locations in 2021. 

NYC commercial leases signed or renewed in Q3 declined 31%, per CBRE data. But it seems homebody brands are the exceptions: Before Ugg, Home Depot was the latest major retailer to lease a palatial storefront in the city.

+ While we’re here: Bloomberg has your passport to international shopping destinations and their plans for a slower holiday season.

E-COMM

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Amazon and Walmart seemed to have their best ideas at the last possible minute. 

The pick-up artist: Amazon on Monday shared a series of updates to its order fulfillment options, including…

• Pickup at Amazon Books or 4-star stores nationwide.
• Contactless delivery to Amazon Hubs, found in retailers including GNC and Rite-Aid.

Funneling orders to pickup won’t meaningfully eliminate packages from Amazon’s shipping networks: It only has 578 stores total, most of which are Whole Foods. But it will help shoppers who can’t wait for packages to hit their doorsteps. Conversion rates increase 32% when retailers offer BOPIS, per Adobe Analytics data shared with Retail Brew.

The delivery guys: Those pop-up fulfillment centers aren’t enough for Walmart to meet online demand. It said Tuesday that it created a program to ID customer orders that can be fulfilled via store inventory. Some orders may be delivered same-day; all orders will cut Walmart’s shipping costs. 

Zoom out: Adobe Analytics also reports that 70% of U.S. shoppers said the recent rise in Covid-19 cases was the shove they needed to shop online more. If there was ever a time for retailers to turn shower thoughts into fulfillment practices, it’s now.

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• Victoria's Secret has replaced the CEO of its lingerie segment.
• Nordstrom plans to expand inventory at its off-price chain, Nordstrom Rack.
• Shopify launched Handshake, a wholesale marketplace.
• Tiffany reported a sales rally in China.
• Best Buy cautioned that its sales streak could end if Covid-19 cases continue rising.

SPONSORED BY SPLITIT

2020 is quite the trendsetter. According to the retail gurus at Splitit, the world of retail in 2020—and this holiday season in particular—has set 10 trends that will shape e-commerce for years to come. Some of these trends have been accelerated by events in 2020, some as a result of the natural progression of technology—but all will be relevant for online retailers. Read up on the latest trends right here.

COMMUNITY

Welcome back to Coworking, our segment highlighting the best part of Retail Brew: you, the readers. You can nominate yourself or a colleague by clicking here.

Today in jobs that are much cooler than mine, we’re joined by Tai Foster, VP of Brand Marketing at Art of Sport.  

How would you describe your job on a date? Creating a personality for the brand and producing content that gives people a reason to care that we exist and see a need to buy our products.

One thing we can’t guess about your job from LinkedIn: I write all the copy for our packaging.

Favorite project you’ve worked on: At Under Armour, I launched real time 3-sec Twitter ads with Stephen Curry back in 2016.

One brand you’re obsessed with (that isn’t your employer): Patta

SWAPPING SKUS

There are Fleets, and then there are tech updates worth talking about. Here are the latest retail tech reads I enjoyed.

Digital storefronts: Most online stores follow cookie cutter, no code templates. Then there’s DTC furniture brand Article—which baked its e-comm infrastructure from scratch. (Protocol)

Wearables: Go inside Oura’s quest to market its health-tracking rings as a fashion statement as well as a high-tech device. (Business of Fashion)

Everything else: Okay, that’s an exaggeration. But our guide to the emerging technologies shaping e-commerce covers a lot of ground. (This newsletter)

ICYMI

Catch up on this week’s top Retail Brew stories.

• In Shoppers’ Hunt for New Gaming Consoles, All Clicks Lead to eBay
• Few Retailers Have Extended Hazard Pay
• Why Brands Are Exploring Unorthodox Vending Machines