One of the Big Questions coming out of the Year of Covid has been: Will shoppers return to shopping in stores? The presumption has been that shoppers have adopted more online shopping practices and won’t want to give up the convenience of having their groceries picked & packed for curbside pickup (BOPIS) and having their apparel, books, dogfood, sporting goods, etc delivered to their front porches.

The US Census Bureau tracks online v in-store buying. Their Q4 report shows that online sales for all of 2020 were 14.0% of total retail, up from 11.0% in 2019. Now, that’s quite a leap, for sure, but I’d have predicted the number was even greater, perhaps pushing 20%.

Turns out, s...

Is your light display providing the best customer experience?

Spring is just around the corner, which means spring cleaning and a fresh look for home and office spaces.

We all saw that the effects of 2020 did not slow the real estate industry. With mortgage interest rates at an all-time low, many U.S. consumers are purchasing and moving into new homes. Lighting fixtures are often an easy, cost-effective way to update a space or make a new space your own.

As consumers shop for light fixtures this spring, how can you ensure the best possible customer experience when they look at your lighting products? Can shoppers easily search and find the best fixtures for their spaces in your showroom? How wi...

Those words strike fear or excitement into the heart of a reader, don’t they?

“What if I quit my job, honey?”

“What if we buy instead of renting?”

“What if the doctor gives me bad news?”

As a business, we think in What If terms all of the time. What if we win this major account and need to add to the team? What if our largest client stops buying? What if the bank won’t loan us the funds to expand? What if we have a fire or a flood? What if we invest in this new piece of equipment?

We also participate in the What Ifs that our clients bring us.

“What if we give you the order today, Tusco? Can you deliver it fast enough?”

“What if we ma...

Integrating Seamless Ecommerce

Ecommerce demand has been growing among consumers for years, that’s no secret. But the Covid pandemic has certainly exploded the buy online pick up in store (BOPIS). Some retailers, such as Kohl’s and Lowe’s, had begun to integrate these options into their offerings even prior to Covid and capitalized on this innovation swiftly at the onset of shutdowns. Lowe’s, having made significant investments in their technology and Ecommerce offerings in 2019, was poised to use these innovations to bolster their market standings. But how do these big boxes take advantage of Ecommerce while also supporting their physical stores? They create a frictio...

Touchless Technology Leads to Frictionless Experiences

The Covid pandemic has accelerated timelines for many pieces of the retail sector. Notably through the integration of more technology in the realm. Many innovations have been years in development but have only recently garnered shopper support during the pandemic. The concept of the Amazon Go stores seemed far fetched and absurd when they were first announced and now consumers are looking for ways to avoid unnecessary contact with surfaces.

Cashless Checkouts

One of the largest changes has been the shift to cashless payment options. CNBC reports that 51% of adults are now using some form of contactless payment – from tap to pay card t...

GameStop - Reinventing the Retail Model

GameStop and other publicly traded stocks like AMC Theaters, Bed Bath & Beyond, BlackBerry, Koss, Nokia, and Tootsie Roll have seen huge run-ups in values due to speculation by investors. To be clear, this isn’t actual investing; it’s a form of gambling that the stock price will go up or down immediately, based on what other investors do, not whether the underlying business is a good bet.

Of course, business is always a gamble: Will people buy what I want to sell? Can I make a profit? Can I compete successfully? There are no guarantees in stock investing nor the businesses people invest in.

Shifting Focus

Gaming has shifted to downloadable cont...

December Sales Top Predictions

The Coronavirus pandemic continues to impact the globe, making it hard to find normalcy in day to day life. Holiday shoppers did not allow this to deter them from spending during the final month of the holiday shopping season. Today, the National Retail Federation announced that holiday sales were up a whopping 8.3% year over year in 2020.

Purchases reflected pandemic trends, including upticks for DIY and cooking purchases. This was prevalent in gift giving at our home, as our gifts were mostly focused on improving our skills in the kitchen.

Non-store sales see biggest gains

It was no surprise that non-store sales, garnered from e-commerce, mail order, and infomeri...

Have we ever been more eager to leave a year behind and welcome a new one? The Covid-19 pandemic made a major mess of many lives and livelihoods in 2020. With the arrival of vaccines, we look hopefully to the horizon and better days ahead. January represents a new beginning but also a leaving behind of old battles and past challenges, none of which we can any longer change.

Humans created the concept of a calendar to make sense of the seasons, to track the cycles of life, the movement of the stars, the march of time. One day passes into the next each midnight whether it’s New Year’s Eve or another 365 days we call a year.

Each turning of the calendar year brings a time to both refl...

Black Friday 2020 Recap & Impact on Holiday Shopping

In the ongoing and fast-paced market shifts of 2020, retailers across the U.S. prepared for a Black Friday that would look drastically different from years previous.

Today, we consider the pandemic’s impact on Black Friday and Cyber Monday this year and what that data means for holiday shopping trends through the end of this year.

Let’s start with this:

In a true sign of the times, sweatshirts and sweatpants were estimated to make up 31% of total U.S. apparel spending this holiday season, according to The NPD Group.

Online & In-Person Shopping

According to Adobe, which tracks website transactions for 80 of the top 100 U.S. online ret...

Product Display & the BOPIS Model

When it comes to retail, we know that frictionless shopping experiences and convenience win the day – and that these influences are sometimes even more important than the product itself.

The global pandemic tested the mettle of many retailers in this regard, posing the question: How do we make a seamless shopping experience for customers when the volume of daily in-store browsers is down, and we can’t offer the same shipping advantages as online giants?

For many brick-and-mortar retailers with an online presence, adopting a BOPIS model has become a valuable way to chase an “Amazon-like” experience for their customers.

What is BOPIS?

BOPIS...