Independent Retailer Podcast: Recent Episodes
Independent Retailer
Independent Retailer's podcast series provides small business owners, and specifically, independent retailers with the latest industry trends, company updates, product news and marketing strategies invaluable to your retail business.
In this episode, Andrew Wren, CEO of Wren Solutions, shares his tips and thoughts on bringing mobile technology into the independent retail setting.
Cutting down on tobacco use is the fourth most popular New Year's resolution among Americans. Whether to avoid health complications or to dodge cigarette taxes, an increasing number of consumers are turning to electronic cigarettes as a replacement for traditional tobacco smokes. As a result, the electronic cigarette industry is booming, bring in $300 million in total revenue at the end of 2012. In this podcast, we discuss the latest technology with Clear Smoke LLC CEO, Tommy Hoang.
Listen to Steve Krogulski, CEO of the OFFPRICE Show, discuss this year's offerings. Krogulski offers his advice for first-time visitors and show veterans alike in preparation for the February event.
Independent Retailer and SnapRetail sit down to discuss the 70-20-10 Rule of social media posting. Listen and learn how to implement this method in your own business for fast results!
The methods used to prevent return fraud are as varied as the methods employed by abusers to perpetrate this type of theft. The key is to use resources wisely and concentrate prevention efforts in three main areas. In this podcast, Wren Solutions CEO, Andrew Wren, speaks with Independent Retailer Magazine about what can be done to prevent fraud and keep your retail store running smoothly.
Retail loss prevention (LP) professionals always have their hands full fighting shrink and preventing theft. Whether through organized retail crime (ORC), shoplifting, vendor fraud, or employee theft, fighting retail crime in its various forms continues to be a primary focus for LP teams everywhere. There is evidence that those LP efforts are paying off and helping retailers stop losses to their bottom lines. There is also reason to believe that LP teams, in partnership with operations professionals, can broaden their scope to combat profit losses of all kinds.
Have you ever wondered if security devices were annoying your good customers as much as hindering would-be thieves? Do you keep your best shoppers in mind when developing security plans? Andrew Wren is back to chat with Independent Retailer about customer service, and how to make it work within an effective loss prevention strategy.
In its eighth annual Organized Retail Crime Survey, the National Retail Federation revealed that 96 percent of the 125 retail companies surveyed were victims of organized retail crime in the past 12 months. Join Independent Retailer Magazine to learn about this topic from Andrew Wren, CEO of Wren Solutions, a loss prevention technology provider helping leading retailers reduce loss and increase profits.
Keeping up with fashion is an ongoing process, and retailers are well advised to set aside some time at least every season to stock up on the latest trends in apparel and accessories, including handbags. For retailers to be prepared, their wholesale suppliers such as Aliz International have to put in the leg work, investigating and testing trends for the seasons to come. Working in such a competitive market requires a continual cycle of innovative and new ideas.
New technologies will come and go, opening new windows of opportunity for theft, fraud and loss. Yet the precise ways in which shrink will manifest itself is often revealed only with time and experience. This presents a challenge to loss prevention (LP) professionals who are already grappling with the best way to shut off dozens of other sources of shrink.
While loss prevention (LP) professionals are usually very focused on highly visible causes of loss such as shoplifting, organized retail crime and administrative error, they are advised to also consider ‘hidden losses’ that occur without being noticed or tracked. A shopper does not receive adequate customer service and leaves the store. Merchandise isn’t replenished on the shelves, driving customers to shop a competitor. Or, worst of all, lost sales from a customer for life due to a bad experience in the store. While not classified as shrink, these losses, triggered by poor customer service or lackluster operational processes, are just as detrimental to the retailer’s bottom line as theft.
Independent retailers, who have their money tied up in inventory, usually find themselves with a much smaller marketing budget and more often than not, do-it-yourself (DIY) campaign projects that take up time and resources. However, as these retailers finish out the fourth quarter and prepare their 2012 business and marketing plans, m-commerce is being discussed as an indispensable necessity to successfully communicate and connect with consumers. And while not everyone is digitally savvy and well versed in mobile technology, it’s mobile content creation solutions such as Magmito that help those entrepreneurial, DIY retailers think beyond their brick and mortar storefront to consider a world of mobile possibilities.
Return fraud presents an enormous challenge to retailers, with an estimated $3.48 billion in resulting losses projected for the 2011 holiday, according to the National Retail Federation’s annual survey. Procedural review audits (PRAs) are an effective tool for systematically combating return fraud and ensuring that fraud-prevention processes and policies are not only in place, but consistently followed.
Based on the reality of how businesses are performing, more than one-third of small business owners (38 percent) share a similar mind frame with their customers and believe the Great Recession is still a reality. According to the American Express OPEN® Small Business Monitor, a semi-annual survey now in its tenth year, “Economic sluggishness is impacting the psyche of entrepreneurs: 27 percent say they do not plan to grow in the next six months (up from 21 percent in the spring) and just 77 percent describe themselves as glass-half-full optimists (down from 85 percent a year ago).”
Procedural review audits (PRAs) help loss prevention professionals assess the areas of greatest risk and loss, enabling them to prioritize where limited resources should be directed. Audits are commonly used in retail to evaluate compliance with regulations and ensure best practices are implemented across retail stores. A procedural review audit is similar, but when applied to loss prevention, can be structured specifically to identify areas of risk and point toward root causes. Therefore, they enable management to effectively measure consistency, while pinpointing operational and loss prevention challenges.
As with any tool, a retail display is only a means to an end, and in the hands of a skilled user any retail display or fixture can be used creatively to produce remarkable and profitable results. When an individual feels inspired by the atmosphere of a store, they’re more likely to interact within the space, and make a purchase. Designing a display concept, which ties the feel of a store to the merchandise being sold is the key to effective marketing, and something FixturesandDisplays.com has strived to help retailers achieve since its start well over a year ago.
Even as Kole Imports has grown into a large company, the one thing it hates is to lose is a customer. One way they have found to make losing a customer a rare event is to give the customer the best advice on any product. “We look at our customers as our partners. That may sound corny, but we are clear on one reality; if our customers don’t do well, we don’t do well. Our slogan is, we are, ‘Your Profit Source.’ Every person from the sales department to the shipping department understands what that means to us,” says Kole.
On average, women buy three handbags per year, own six (or more over the age of 55), and spend between $40 to $65 on average per handbag purchase, according to StyleCareer.com. One woman can never have too many handbags, at least not according to co-founder of Aliz International, Rosanna Tran. In fact, her collection consists of hundreds of licensed and fashion bags. And for wholesale prices of $20 or less, her collection can be part of your and your customer’s collections.
Amaller businesses such as independent retailers are more vulnerable when they open up their POS system to electronic purchasing options. They are constantly under siege from malware, hackers and credit card fraud. Verizon Inc. reported recently that over 60 percent of the security breaches that occurred in 2010 were within companies of 100 or fewer employees. That is why system management appliances, such as Dell KACE, equipped to accelerate PCI standards and increase security within a POS system are becoming increasingly popular. Systems management support is a critical piece to the security puzzle, and Dell KACE’s affordable systems management appliances help companies tackle compliance issues by providing critical tools and capabilities, such as automated patching, local and remote software distribution, and state-of-the-art reporting.
While the recession may leave gift giving impossible, value merchandise such as greeting cards are are an affordable way to celebrate life's special moments. And at 18 cents a card, Stockwell Greetings gives retailers the opportunity to build up their gift section and give their customers the variety they are looking for.
The intent of National Preparedness Month, held each September, is to encourage Americans to prepare for disasters or emergencies in their homes, businesses and communities. The key is to take action to be prepared, not simply write plans or hold discussions. When it comes to preparedness, retailers have a dual mission: to ready their own organizations for emergencies and also to support other businesses, families and individuals in their efforts to be prepared. September offers a great opportunity for retailers to make preparedness a primary issue in their own organization and throughout the communities they serve.
The purpose of this podcast interview is to demonstrate for other retailers the value of incorporating a 'giving back' strategy and approach not as an add-on to how they run their business at key parts of the year (like holiday season), but rather by incorporating 'giving back' as a way of doing business (a core component of a company's overall mission as a retail brand).
Current retail displays have evolved into a variety of styles and forms to equip the common needs of today’s retailer, who is spending less on replacing fixtures due to the economic times. Mick Thaxton, national sales manager of Newood Display Fixture Manufacturing, confirms, “It used to be people would replace fixtures every two or three years, just because they wanted a new look.” Now, all that any brick and mortar store, whether a hospital gift shop, book shop or clothing store, needs to concern itself with is a display’s longevity, functionality, assembly and practicality. Newood’s brick and mortar customers can select from 20 plus product lines, ranging from $10 to $2,000.
Acclaimed to be a diversified show for a diversified market, the Asia America Trade Show (ACS America) provides buyers, suppliers, and many trading companies in Florida with the opportunity to exhibit and acquire general merchandise, gifts and toys, housewares, apparel, consumer electronics and much more. Surrounded by 43 countries from Central and South America and the Caribbean, Miami has been chosen for its high marketability to host the tradeshow scheduled for September 20 to 22.
Loss prevention professionals conduct critical activities on a daily basis; activities that salvage the retailer's bottom line. And while these daily activities of a loss prevention manager are critical, even more significant may be the time and effort spent on emergency planning and preparedness.
Ron Welty, vice president of Mystery Shopping Providers Association (MSPA), the largest professional trade association dedicated to improving service quality, told me in a previous interview that he believes that using a mystery shopper may help independent retailers better evaluate their customer service. Carl Ashby, president of Ann-Crittenden Hallmark Gold Crown stores, agrees that the unbiased evaluation of mystery shoppers has been a part of his success as an owner of thirteen stores throughout North and South Carolina. "It isn't just about evaluating the customer service level of your employees when you aren't around, but mystery shopping has provided me with an extra set of eyes and ears, since being in all thirteen locations is impossible," Ashby notes.
Discount Wholesalers moves so much product because it focuses on price, quality, availability and organization. And retailers leave, feeling like their multiple product needs have been fulfilled.
While other clothing wholesalers and retailers are faced with the challenges of increased fuel costs and raw material prices such as cotton, Cotton Connection continues to offer competitive pricing. “We can meet or beat any published price,” says Ibrahim Kothawala, director of operations. A wholesaler of activewear in Chicago and the Midwest, Cotton Connection began in 1980 in the north side of Chicago and quickly expanded. Now the company sells to independent retailers, as well as screen printers and embroiderers. As distributor of Fruit of the Loom, Gildan and Jerzees brands, the company looks to maintain its mission of providing the best quality and the best selection of name brand products at the wholesale level with outstanding service and value.
For over 18 years, Killerbeads has been providing retailers around the world with the hottest trends available in the youth market, and believes in best practices in order to do so. A family company committed to customer service and quality products, Killerbeads also offers a profitable line of innovative accessory, gift and incense programs.
Dan Mottsman, CEO, notes, “Staying with our western theme works for us. And we tend to be long term in our outlook with things that sell.” Among these long term sellers are hats wholesaling between $1 to $30, belt buckles offered for $6 to $32 wholesale (most in the $8 to $10 range), as well as shirts, jewelry and more, which retail for at least keystone.
Among today's indie retail advocates is Stacy Mitchell, senior researcher for the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and author of Big-Box Swindle. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), with the help of Mitchell, has developed a program, the New Rules Project, to help bring fresh new policy solutions to communities and states to ensure that they are designing rules as if community matters. David Morris writes about the dilemma today’s communities face, commenting, “Some view the decline in the importance of territorial communities as an inevitable consequence of modernity: localism will naturally have diminished importance in an age of globalism. But this theory of the inevitable decline of community implies that public policy has been neutral on the issue. It has not.” ILSR agrees and the New Rules Project has been set in motion because the old rules don’t work. They undermine local economies, subvert democracy, weaken our nation’s sense of community and ignore the costs of our decisions for future generations.
Gift cards continue to be a popular item for consumers. You don't have to have a digital gift card offering to provide a differentiating gift card experience. There are a lot of things you can do to add a digital layer to your gift cards and certificates, offering something special to shoppers who have no clue what to give their gift recipient.
While the estimated 45.9 million U.S. smokers may view their cigarette lighting as a pleasurable pastime, an act of de-stressing and a form of social interaction, there is the looming harm of toxins such as tar, tobacco, carcinogens, carbon monoxide and formaldehyde to be concerned with. LOGIC TECHNOLOGY, the NJ based e-cigarette company, only manufactures LOGIC Disposable Electronic Cigarettes (e-cigs) that provide a revolutionary alternative for traditional smokers to avoid the 4,000 toxins that are in cigarettes, while replicating the entire sensory experience that smokers enjoy. The perfected sensory experience can only be mastered by science; therefore, LOGIC disposable e-cigs utilize "Real Cigarette-Sensation Technology.”
Tweedie’s online marketplace, www.LittleIndependent.com, provides owners and their sale items with a wider audience, increasing the chance of sale. In fact, LittleIndependent.com seeks to solve two issues concurrently: 1) for independent store owners, it helps increase visibility for sale merchandise, and 2) it provides consumers with easy, convenient access to deals at the locally owned independent stores they value and like to patronize.
The Magic City Gift Show starts this Fall, Sept. 23 to 25, at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, FL, as an annual event, with a focus on serving the business and independent retail community, local nonprofit organizations and the general public with the widest selection of variety merchandise Central Florida has ever seen. With such a wide variety of products, there is something for every type of buyer.
Ron Welty, vice president of Mystery Shopping Providers Association (MSPA), the largest professional trade association dedicated to improving service quality, believes that using a mystery shopper may help independents better evaluate their customer service. Unlike a customer survey, which often receives emotional responses and opinions, a mystery shopper is trained to research specific service areas and provides an unbiased evaluation.
As the economy makes a comeback, will store owners shift their focus and forget about the necessity of loss prevention? LP personnel can prevent this mistake. Loss prevention may be one of the least understood functional areas in retail. By using the marketing steps of educate, nurture and close the deal, LP personnel can change this.
Budpak’s products have proven to be very popular affordable alternatives to the higher priced dermatological creams and ointments sold by major pharmaceutical companies. Committed to providing customers with premium products that will stand the test of time, while focusing on quality control, has helped make Budpak creams the products they are today.