Morning Brew - ☕️ Feeling ’22

What retailers will focus on this year.
Morning Brew January 07, 2022

Retail Brew

Contentsquare

Good day. We’ve made it through the first week of January, an accomplishment we’ll be touting for way too long.

In today’s edition:

  • What retailers will focus on in 2022
  • New York could bring back to-go cocktails
  • The tech and products that stood out at CES

—Katishi Maake, Jeena Sharma, Erin Cabrey

TRENDS

Retail resolutions

Question mark pushing a cart to represent uncertainty in retail Francis Scialabba

The future is now. The last two years forced retailers to rethink their business strategies, and so will 2022. But which will take priority this year?

We spoke to retail analysts, experts, and execs to find out.

Chain, chain, chain

We can’t stop and won’t stop talking about the supply chain—neither will retailers. Under Armour COO Colin Browne thinks we’ll be doing so long after 2022.

“This decade will be the decade of [the] supply chain,” Browne told Retail Brew. “The difference between good and great is going to be those brands, those businesses, that really understand how to pivot their supply chain toward [the] customer and that DTC model.”

To that end, Nikki Baird, VP of retail innovation at Aptos, expects retailers to amp up different fulfillment options throughout the year, calling out dark stores, gray stores, and dropshipping, to move goods faster and faster.

  • Companies will also push to be more dynamic, she told us: Why not use your e-comm distribution center to replenish a store if that’s where inventory is moving faster? Or vice versa?

“Retailers are looking at 2022 as the year to revisit their inventory strategies across the supply chain, but especially as it relates to getting inventory into the hands of customers,” she said.

Whenever, wherever: Getting customers to come back is a focus every year, but retailers are figuring out what retention looks like today, given all the options available to shoppers.

“Building loyalty does not just mean earning points,” noted Emily Pfeiffer, senior analyst of commerce technology at Forrester. “It means wanting to come back again and again. And customers demonstrate that loyalty when they feel there’s a benefit, when they feel heard, when they’re having the experiences they want in all places.”

“In a world in which experience is everything and consumers want to shop everywhere…every touchpoint should be shoppable,” she told us.

Click here to read which other trends retailers have their eyes on in 2022.—KM

        

FOOD & BEV

A Manhattan to go...maybe

Drinks at Kindred Archer Lewis

A toast, New York: To-go cocktails may be coming back for good, New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced this week, six months after the policy was scrapped.

Restaurants and bars were happy to hear the idea. “It’s great for business,” Pietro Quaglia, the owner of downtown Manhattan restaurant Pietro Nolita, told us. (He’s even planning to create his own “to-go cups” instead of relying on the typical plastic variety.)

But businesses are just as mindful that the move wouldn’t be the game-changer it was at the start of the pandemic.

That was then: “It was popular and helpful because it was the only thing people could buy,” Alexis Percival, a partner at East Village’s Kindred restaurant and Ruffian wine bar, said to us. “Now that restaurants are open, and it’s the middle of winter, walking out to a restaurant and taking a cold cocktail to go is probably not going to save anybody.” (That said, the proposal would be worked through in the spring.)

  • Dan McLaughlin, owner of The Pony Bar on the Upper East Side, agreed that he doesn’t expect the “same watershed effect,” but it would still boost sales.

Steady now: Percival thinks more can be done to lift restrictions, like letting restaurants deliver wine bottles alongside food. Quaglia, meanwhile, wants more stability. As a small business owner, the pace of changes has been too hard to keep up with, he explained.

  • He spent $15,000 to build an outdoor patio, but would’ve probably invested in a more “proper” structure if he had known expanded outdoor dining would be a longer lifeline.

“What we’ve been doing for the last two years is throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks,” Percival added. “Nothing is going to be the silver bullet. Nothing has been a silver bullet.”—JS

        

TOGETHER WITH CONTENTSQUARE

Does Your Brand’s Digital Experience *Actually* Deliver?

Contentsquare

Welp, it better. Because customers are no longer loyal to brands for the sake of being loyal. Ouch, we know. Consumers have shifted their loyalties to experiences—meaning they’re switchin’ tabs from one site to another in search of the most frictionless journey.

Retail brands need to understand and deliver online experiences catered specifically to their customers—but often, they don’t have that sweet, sweet granular data necessary to succeed. Luckily, Contentsquare can help. They’re the no. 1 enterprise digital experience analytics platform trusted by the world’s leading retail brands.

Contentsquare helps brands deliver intuitive, data-driven experiences that entice new and existing customers, so you can stand out from the competition.

Take global shoe retailer Clarks as an example. Using Contentsquare, they were able to surface and resolve customer frustration in their checkout flow which resulted in a $2.7M increase in revenue.

Read the full case study here.

TECH

Do we need that?

Handheld hair-coloring device from L’Oréal L’Oréal

From humidity-tracking earbuds to a health-monitoring light bulb, companies at CES this week debuted a slew of tech products we never knew we needed. Here’s a roundup of some of the show’s most notable retail-focused innovations.

Thing of beauty: L’Oréal unveiled Colorsonic, an at-home handheld device coming next year that lets consumers mix and evenly apply hair color, along with a virtual hair-color try-on tool for salons.

  • P&G debuted an “ultra-personalized” smart Oral-B toothbrush that detects where in the mouth you’re brushing and offers “zone-by-zone” guidance (there’s already a waitlist), and it entered the metaverse—you knew someone would—with a virtual experience called BeautySPHERE.
  • After teasing the concept last year, startup Ninu introduced an app-controlled “smart perfume” that features 100 fragrances in one bottle.

Autopilot: Deere & Co. debuted a fully autonomous John Deere tractor that can be monitored through a mobile app, aimed at improving large-scale farming, that’ll go on-sale later this year.

  • Meanwhile, for indecisive auto shoppers, BMW introduced a color-changing car.

Eat up: Looks like robots are taking over—LG exhibited its new door-to-door autonomous delivery bot that’s suitable for outdoor excursions (even slopes and curbs). And food-tech startup Beyond Honeycomb’s new AI-driven kitchen robot can learn to reproduce chef-quality dishes.

Plus, there are plenty of things we didn’t have room to mention, like invisible headphones or a backpack that helps you find your missing iPhone—embarrassing if it was in the backpack the whole time.—EC

        

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

  • The US added almost 200,000 jobs in December, a drop from the month before, but retailers have nearly recovered all their losses from the pandemic’s start.
  • GameStop is reportedly jumping into NFTs and cryptocurrency.
  • Starbucks’ unionized workers at a store outside Buffalo continued their walkout over issues of Covid-19 safety and understaffing.
  • Yeezy Gap, in a collab within a collab, is partnering with Balenciaga.
  • Kate Hudson is making her first move into the beauty biz with a line for Juice Beauty.

TOGETHER WITH CONTENTSQUARE

Contentsquare

Get the deets on digital experiences that deliver. Contentsquare, the no. 1 enterprise digital experience analytics platform trusted by the world’s leading retail brands, helps you deliver intuitive, data-driven experiences that entice new and existing customers. Curious? Samesies. See how global shoe retailer Clarks redefined the retail experience and drove $1.1M annual revenue from a single Contentsquare insight. Read the case study.

SWAPPING SKUS

Today’s top retail reads.

Homegrown: American manufacturing might be having a moment. “Reshoring is not going to happen overnight, but it is happening, and it’s exciting.” (The New York Times)

Back to the future: A Walmart VR demo from 2017 has gone viral—and the company behind it is fine with being roasted. (Vice)

Cratered: How wellness brand Moon Juice went from a “magical” place to work to maybe not so much, according to some former employees. (Insider)

FRIEND OR FAUX?

Three of the stories below are real...and one is most definitely not. Can you spot the fake?

  1. Native and Baked by Melissa collabed on a cupcake-scented deodorant.
  2. Coors Banquet is offering up a year’s supply of beer (and a bonsai tree) if someone can guess how many times the brand shows up in the fourth season of Cobra Kai.
  3. Oreo will dole out $25 gift cards to people that ditch their New Year’s resolutions.
  4. Patagonia and Samsung paired up on a new washing machine to help cut down on microplastics.

Keep reading for the answer.

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FRIEND OR FAUX? ANSWER

Nope, the cookie brand doesn’t want to get in on your goals. But rapper Fat Joe (and his new burger range at White Castle) has other plans.

Written by Katishi Maake, Jeena Sharma, and Erin Cabrey

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