I am celebrating 25 years as the Retail Doctor and looking at retail trends. I put myself through college working at the Broadway Department Store. Before someone could use any credit card, we had to look up their account number in little booklets with 3-point type. If the number was listed, we had to call for authorization.
Usually, calling wasn’t a big deal, but sometimes the operator would ask, “Do you have the card?” If I said yes, they would tell me to take scissors, cut them in half, and put the customer on the phone. This was fraud protection in those days.
In those days, you had no option but to buy products at a store. In those days, if you wanted to learn about a product, you also had to go into a store. Back then, products didn't find you via a Facebook feed...of course, there were no social media then either.
A lot has changed since I became the Retail Doctor in 1994, but retail has survived and grown since then...
Buy Online, Pickup In-Store (BOPIS). When this idea first gained traction a couple of years ago, its main purpose was to help brick-and-mortar retailers compete with online retailers. It was meant to get customers into their stores, now serving as mini-distribution centers. It also saved shipping costs and got the merchandise to the customer in hours instead of days. Nowadays, it has expanded to include curbside delivery, and according to the GPS Shopper Survey, 67% of US shoppers used BOPIS in a six month period.
Robots. Headlines are becoming more alarming. One-third of retail jobs to vanish by 2025, and Robots could wipe out another 6 million jobs. With online still growing, there simply aren’t going to be enough workers to pick all those products in warehouses or stores. I’m telling you that even though you will no longer make as many trips to a retail store, you will still be buying the same amount of products. And those orders will still require someone or something to pick it up and pack it.
Subscriptions. When I grew up, the only subscriptions you could have were to your local newspaper or favorite magazines. Thanks to Amazon and others, a new business model has arisen where a customer pays a recurring price at regular intervals to get a product. It can be as basic as the Dollar Shave Club or an Amazon subscription to your favorite toilet paper, as fancy as a subscription for food delivery like Blue Apron, or a monthly clothes or skincare delivery. The churn rate on these subscriptions is pretty high, so many are losing money. After all, once you have been through a few months, you can get bored and want to choose something on your own – instead of allowing someone else to edit your choices.
Part-time becomes the norm. Retail used to be a place where you could find full-time work fairly easily. But with staffing done by algorithms and the avoidance of providing benefits, part-time is now the norm. Without much effort, you can’t build loyalty and a branded shopping experience with people who only work a couple of days a week. In a chicken-or-the-egg scenario, do retailers train less because they have more part-timers or more part-timers because they train less?
Managers as taskmasters. It used to be managers were in stores to develop their crew, to make their day, and to motivate employees so they would want to advance into management. Except for Lululemon, other large retail stores have scrapped such idealistic plans.. When managers are primarily responsible for moving merchandise, getting orders picked and other tasks, employee development falls. Because the job market is so tight and their tasks so long, just getting the job done is a daily hassle.
Rentals. But the most startling transformation in retail has to be the ability to rent anything at any time and have it come to you. As Boomers age out from buying the latest in clothing, cars, appliances, etc., retailers will look to Millennials to pick up the slack. But the Millennial generation doesn’t see as much reason to own and is happier to downsize, share, and rent.
Second-hand stores. There was a time when used clothing was only found in older downtown stores; now, consignment and thrift stores are booming. The stigma of buying used is gone, and Millennials, in particular, are willing to pay big bucks for vintage jeans that someone actually wore, stained, and used. Further, according to CNN, soon at Neiman Marcus stores, customers will be able to receive a price for their items from the used clothing retailer Fashionphile on the spot and get cash back. With more than 1 in 3 Gen Z shoppers buying secondhand clothes, the resale clothing industry is expected to go from $28 billion today to $51 billion by 2023.
Restaurants in stores. Department stores have always known the longer you can keep a shopper in your store, the more likely they are to buy. While many department stores scaled back or closed their restaurants in the 70s and 80s, boutique retailers like Anthropologie and RH, and even legendary Tiffany’s, are bringing upscale restaurants back in stores to enhance customer lingering.
Dollar stores. I grew up on Kresge and Woolworths, where most everything carried a low price. Through recessions and boom years, these stores came and went. But now they have found their niche, particularly in rural areas. This week, the largest, with 8,000 locations, Family Dollar, announced plans to sell alcohol in 1,000 stores. These stores are poised to be affected the most by the tariff wars.
See also, 5 Hot Retail Trends You Can Implement In Your Retail Store Today
With online bandits getting story after story about how the customer has changed, brick-and-mortar retailers must bring the focus back to a branded shopping experience and not give up or become complacent.
That takes hiring trainable people who don’t look down on retail as beneath them.
It takes training them in the steps that have to occur for a person to buy your products at full price and then holding them accountable for delivering it.
It takes moving from the minimum acceptable training to the necessary required training. That means hiring full-time employees and having managers who emphasize growing their skills so that training becomes what we do, not what we did.
It means having BOPIS easily available and marketed.
It means robots are coming. And mark my words: if you don’t add anything to a sale, you’re in jeopardy of being replaced by a robot.
And rental services are here and growing.
But don’t let those trends affect you or your customers’ in-store shopping experience.
Do you want to be around twenty-five years from now?
Be brilliant on the basics of engaging a stranger, discovering the shopper, and, yes, making a customer.
And if you’re ready for that, download my services guide to see how I can help you.