New Money & Main$treet TV Interview on Personal Online Safety!

Posted on February 2, 2015 by bermanevansretail
As we have posted before (see for example, 1, 2, 3), identity theft, hacking, and invasion of privacy are rampant issues that we face today. And this is a BIG issue when we shop online.
Recently, we sat down with Fios1’s Money & Main$treet host Giovanna Drpic for a TV interview on this important subject.

 

 

Posted in Part 1: Overview/Planning, Part 2: Ownership, Strategy Mix, Online, Nontraditional, Part 3: Targeting Customers and Gathering Information, Part 5: Managing a Retail Business, Part 7: Communicating with the Customer, Privacy and Identity Theft Issues, Video Clips (non-career) | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Planning for the Next Job Promotion

Posted on January 31, 2015 by bermanevansretail
You’ve been stuck at a certain point in your career and feel that now is really time to get that next promotion. The recession is over, you’ve been doing everything expected of you, and you’ve polished up your self-brand credentials at LinkedIn and at your firm. So, what should you do next?
According to Alexia Vernon, writing for Careerealism, there are 6 things you can do:
1. “Under Promise And Over Deliver — With many companies leaner than they were several years ago, there are probably many internal voids. You want to identify and then fill them. I recommend looking at how you can informally be of service; for example, ask your supervisor or team members how you can step in and support them.”
2. “Be An Intrapreneur — An intrapreneur is someone who uses an entrepreneur’s mindset, relationships, skills, and behaviors within an organization’s four walls to develop new, innovative ways of working, new products, or new services. By launching a new venture within your company’s four walls, you may just create your new position. And when you succeed, you will have evidence of your leadership experience.”
3. “Get Your Internal Networking On — It’s important to develop mutually beneficial relationships throughout your company. To put yourself in line for such an opportunity, set the time to get to know all of your colleagues. Be curious about their work and opportunities they foresee on the horizon.”
4. “Balance Short and Long-Term Thinking — While it’s important to stay on top of your chief responsibilities and accountabilities, you also want to have an eye towards how your work plays into the bigger picture. Get clear on your department or organization’s one, two, and even five-year goals and work with your supervisor to make sure that how you are spending your time and energy is moving you — and the company — in the right direction.”
5. “Zap Negativity — People want to work with happy people. And let’s face it, right now too many workplaces are seas of persistent complaint. Senior leaders also want emerging talent who see opportunities rather than obstacles.”
6. “Ask — This might sound obvious, but I can’t tell you how many people know a position is open in their companies and fail to self-advocate for themselves or hope that a supervisor will read their minds and make them that offer they can’t refuse. This is particularly important for women. Men initiate these kinds of conversations about four times as often as women!”
Click the image to learn more.
 

 

Posted in Career Useful Information, Careers in Retailing, Part 5: Managing a Retail Business | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

It’s Not Always Great to Be a Businessweek Cover Story

Posted on January 30, 2015 by bermanevansretail
Abercrombie & Fitch (A&F) was once a shining retail apparel star among teens and young adults. However, the chain has faced some tough times in recent years.
Consider this:
“Abercrombie’s predicament, perhaps because of the cultural clout it once wielded, feels especially acute. ‘The sexy collegiate image fit into the age of Gossip Girl and 90210,’ says retail analyst Wendy Liebmann, ‘but now it feels like it’s grounded in an era that’s at least ten years old. I don’t think shoppers in the U.S. and Canada have totally walked away. But, as a whole, I think shoppers have moved on.’ Last year, shortly after Abercombie announced a $15.6 million quarterly loss, Engaged Capital, a California company that holds about 400,000 shares of Abercrombie stock, wrote an open letter to the Abercrombie board demanding Jeffries’s ouster.” [Susan Berfield and Lindsey Rupp, Bloomberg Businessweek, February 9, 2014]
“The retailer and its competitors have been struggling as young people increasingly spend money on smartphones and lattes instead. Abercrombie CEO Mike Jeffries retired last week after two decades at the helm.” [Ashley Lutz, Business Insider, December 16, 2014]
Now, Bloomberg Businessweek’s January 22, 2015 cover story is titled “The Aging of Abercrombie & Fitch” and comes with the following distressing photo.
In this cover story, Berfield and Rupp report that:
“Abercrombie is a $4 billion company with three brands and about a thousand stores in 19 countries. A&F is for college-age men and women, Hollister is for 12- to 18-year-olds, and abercrombie — with a little “a” — is for those under 12. The Abercrombie look across the brands remained almost unchanged since Jeffries first defined it in the mid-1990s: sweatshirts and sweatpants and hoodies — until recently with huge A&F and moose logos — as well as graphic T-shirts, polo shirts, jeans, shorts, and flip-flops.  Stores, mostly in malls, had dark wood shutters and played loud dance music. Black-and-white photos of young men and their abs adorned the walls and the shopping bags.”
“The attitude — conformist, sexy, exclusive — hadn’t evolved much, either. But teens have. They are shopping at fast-fashion chains such as Forever 21 and H&M, which are dirt cheap. Jeffries didn’t think A&F should discount. He wouldn’t sell clothes bigger than women’s size 10 until about a year ago. It wasn’t until last spring that he allowed the lights to be turned up in the Hollister mall stores and the shutters taken off the A&F ones. He lowered the music and reduced the amount of cologne sprayed in the stores by exactly 25 percent. And he agreed that the logos had to become less prominent, too.”

 

Can A&F turn things around?

 

Posted in Part 1: Overview/Planning, Part 2: Ownership, Strategy Mix, Online, Nontraditional, Part 3: Targeting Customers and Gathering Information, Part 4: Store Location Planning, Part 5: Managing a Retail Business, Part 6: Merchandise Management and Pricing, Part 7: Communicating with the Customer, Part 8: Putting It All Together | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment