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A TreeHouse Grows in Dallas
From TheRobinReport.com --- Imagine if Home Depot and Whole Foods decided to open a store together…and got Deepak Chopra to run it. What you’d have is something not all that dissimilar from TreeHouse,...
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Costco’s Peculiar Online Strategy
From TheRobinReport.com --- Costco may be crazy like a fox. Costco Wholesale is a huge and successful retailer. Yet there are a few recent signs that it might be increasingly difficult for Costco to...
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An Anthropology Study
From TheRobinReport.com --- Anthropology is the study of how human societies interact. Anthropologie is a case study of how certain human societies shop for home products. What a difference a few...
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Kohl’s/Amazon – Win/Win?
From TheRobinReport.com --- Or…Is Amazon Envisioning a Future Acquisition of Kohl’s? I have to hand it to Kohl’s CEO, Kevin Mansell, and his team. The Midwestern Vince Lombardi mindset is usually...
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Toy Story…the Sequel
From TheRobinReport.com --- The game isn’t quite over…but the fun has certainly stopped. As Toys”R”Us slogs through what looks like a fling with bankruptcy, it once again points to two very basic...
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Nordstrom Local: A Triple-Header: Personalization, Experience, BOPUS
From TheRobinReport.com --- The opening of Nordstrom Local in West Hollywood, California, on October 3, is a visionary move, responding to the demanding consumer youth culture. Boldly innovative and...
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The Children’s Place – A Case Study For Winning
From TheRobinReport.com --- There’s such a dark cloud of bad news for most general merchandise and apparel retailers today that when I examined how The Children’s Place rose from the near-dead in 2010,...
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The Rise & Still-Falling Iconic American Brand
From TheRobinReport.com --- This article is not an attempt to match Edward Gibbon’s epic book, The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, in quantity or quality, although its quantity might seem as...
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The Joy of Retailing
From TheRobinReport.com --- When you attend Shoptalk, you feel the kinetic energy, optimism and confidence of the startups and investors that are reshaping retail’s future. The guiding principles of...
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Home on 59th Street
From TheRobinReport.com --- Bloomingdale’s is in the midst of a full-blown, gut-job renovation and remodeling of its New York flagship store home floors…and not a minute too soon. With all due...
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Authentic Brands Group, The Brand Doctor
From TheRobinReport.com --- Ever wonder where your once-beloved brand went when you no longer see it in your department store of choice? Did it get acquired, go bankrupt, or did it find a new home...
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Kudos to Kohl’s CEO Kevin Mansell –“Greatness Agenda” Kicks In
From TheRobinReport.com --- A winning quarter does not necessarily qualify as a turnaround. But, the initiatives and strategies CEO Kevin Mansell and his team planted during what I questioned might...
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Crate Expectations
From TheRobinReport.com --- It was the best of locations. It was the worst of decisions. With apologies to a Dickens mash-up. the news that Crate & Barrel is going to be closing its Michigan Avenue...
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Kroger’s Data-Driven Future
From TheRobinReport.com --- Much has been written in The Robin Report about the epic struggle between Amazon and Walmart for supremacy in U.S retailing. The advantages enjoyed by each of these behemoth...
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Open Sesame: Kroger and Alibaba
From TheRobinReport.com --- It doesn’t take an enormous feat of memory to recall that quaint term “trade channels.” Yes, there was a time when apparel retailers sold apparel, food retailers sold food...
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Why the Late Ingvar Kamprad Changed the World
From TheRobinReport.com --- Chances are the name Ingvar Kamprad doesn’t mean much to the typical home furnishings shopper, but take his initials – I and K – and combine them with the first letters of...
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It’s Cold in Minnesota: Menswear Brand Askov Finlayson Wants to Keep it that...
From TheRobinReport.com --- For those who have not yet had the pleasure of visiting Minneapolis in winter, I can testify from firsthand experience, it is a bone-chilling experience. This year’s Super...
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And It’s Walmart by a Nose Ahead of Amazon for Flipkart
From TheRobinReport.com --- Wait a second! Just last week I wrote on the race for global dominance between Amazon and Alibaba. And shame on me for not even mentioning Walmart, especially since I’ve...
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Victoria’s Secret: Behind the Curve
From TheRobinReport.com --- Who would’ve thunk it? How could Les Wexner, the IQ leader of leaders in the pantheon of retail greats, not have thunk ahead of the curve about the fact that his iconic...
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The Beauty Industry Faces Its Biggest Challenge, Ever
From TheRobinReport.com --- The beauty industry is facing the biggest and most complicated period in its history. Some might say, “The beauty industry is broken.” Others may ask, “Are the days of...
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