Opinion – Page 331
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OpinionLouis Vuitton vs the Post Office
Visiting the new Louis Vuitton store in Westfield London last week was an impressive, but ultimately unsatisfying experience. Yes, it’s a fine example of the brand’s current shop-fit, but were you to travel to Munich and to wander into local luxury department store Oberpollinger, you’d find more or less the ...
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OpinionEra of transparency for retailers?
Asda’s Andy Bond says grocers need to be more transparent, so how can they use social networking sites to improve their customer relationships?
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OpinionShould UK retailers stay home?
DSGi’s offloading of its Hungarian Electro World business for the princely sum of €1 makes business sense, even if it is another setback to the retailer’s international ambitions.
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OpinionKnow your customer
Kerry Katona may have had her problems, but she’s still right for Iceland, says Malcolm Walker
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OpinionIt’s worth playing the long game
Celebrating anniversaries underline to consumers that they are dealing with a company of substance, says Paul Smiddy
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OpinionFrench Connection still needs to carve a niche
French Connection has successfully rebranded itself several times over the years but with competition more fierce than ever, it now needs to put its money where its mouth is and ensure its product speaks for itself.While nobody would argue that the retailer’s FCUK campaign was unsuccessful, the after effects gave ...
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OpinionIT must help to slash stock levels
The cost of holding stock is under the spotlight as retailers look to free up cash, and IT departments should make sure that they are involved.Too much stock can strangle any retail business. But if there is one good thing to come out of the recession, it is the rethink ...
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OpinionBanks’ failure to lend is the biggest block to development
The BCSC is right to call on the public and private sectors to take a more collaborative approach to planning.
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OpinionIn praise of visual merchandising
Retailers may well have suffered the worst six months in recent memory, but that has merely made the top players raise the visual merchandising bar yet again.
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OpinionFood retail’s outstanding leaders
The supermarkets have pursued very different tactics to navigate the recession, but their success derives from one common quality, which is a clear vision that comes right from the very top.
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OpinionIs Westminster beckoning for Next’s Simon Wolfson?
In the retail industry, much of the chatter last week centred not on Next’s latest numbers, but chief executive Simon Wolfson’s future plans. For some time, speculation has mounted that he might consider a shift into politics, casting himself as Lord King to David Cameron’s Mrs T.
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OpinionEvery problem is an opportunity
Even swine flu creates opportunities for canny retailers to tap into, says Jacqueline Gold
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OpinionUnreasonable returns laws need rethink
Many unhappy returns – and sometimes no returns at all. When it comes to online and catalogue retailing, there’s a whopping imbalance between the obligations the law places on traders versus customers
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OpinionDesigual's designs on Dublin
Zany Spanish fashion brand Desigual has opened its first shop in the Republic of Ireland in Arnotts’ new lifestyle store at the Jervis Centre in Dublin.
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OpinionIT: winning the right retail battles
While small IT outages may look bad to customers when they are left queuing at stores, it is the IT problems that go unnoticed — such as data leakages — that actually create the biggest risks.
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OpinionJohn Lewis’s plan B could become retail’s plan A
Call it pragmatism or call it a compromise, but John Lewis’s venture into standalone home and electricals stores is a sign of quite how far retailers are having to move away from their well-trodden paths property-wise.
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OpinionCheap products needn’t mean cheap-looking stores
This year’s World Retail Congress in Barcelona ended on Friday, closing three days of conferencing, networking and, it has to be said, a fair amount of evening carousing. But for those who wandered across the road into the adjacent Diagonal Mar shopping centre, there was an additional talking point. Diagonal ...
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OpinionNew era of supermarket loyalty wars?
Tesco has led the charge on loyalty cards. Will its Clubcard relaunch next week win it back customers from competitors Asda, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons?
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OpinionWaterstone’s must turn the page
Has HMV’s takeover of Ottakar’s paved the way for Waterstone’s high street domination as opponents of the deal predicted?
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OpinionSix steps to business success
The right incentive schemes are the driving force for motivating staff, says Neil Gillis