November 13, 2012
Zara’s Big Idea: What the World’s Top Fashion Retailer Tells Us About Innovation Zara stores cozy up to the most famous brands in the world to sing their luxury ambitions even as they profit off a brilliant, cheap, short supply chain that delivers similar fashion at a much lower price. Supply chains sounds boring. But they’re the secret to Zara’s success. Rather than ship skirts and dresses from Chinese plants where they arrive in-store after the style has peaked, Inditex (the parent company) makes the bulk of its clothes in Spain and Morocco. A hemline suggestion goes from a customer’s lips to a sales rack at record speed. The company, now the largest fashion retailer on earth, has grown overall sales by about 50% in five years to $17.5 billion. Its employees have gone from 80,000 to 110,000 in that time, despite being headquartered in a depressed Spanish economy, and selling predominantly to a very sick European continent. Read more. [Image: Reuters]

Zara’s Big Idea: What the World’s Top Fashion Retailer Tells Us About Innovation

Zara stores cozy up to the most famous brands in the world to sing their luxury ambitions even as they profit off a brilliant, cheap, short supply chain that delivers similar fashion at a much lower price.

Supply chains sounds boring. But they’re the secret to Zara’s success. Rather than ship skirts and dresses from Chinese plants where they arrive in-store after the style has peaked, Inditex (the parent company) makes the bulk of its clothes in Spain and Morocco. A hemline suggestion goes from a customer’s lips to a sales rack at record speed. The company, now the largest fashion retailer on earth, has grown overall sales by about 50% in five years to $17.5 billion. Its employees have gone from 80,000 to 110,000 in that time, despite being headquartered in a depressed Spanish economy, and selling predominantly to a very sick European continent.

Read more. [Image: Reuters]

11:16am
(Notes: 125)
  
Filed under: Fashion Retail Zara Europe Asia Business 
April 20, 2012
Is it Really the End of Retail? Hey, there’s something you should know about the end of retail: It’s not really the end of retail. […] Here’s what I see: Manufacturing’s in a free fall. Even its recent recovery — 400,000 new jobs in two years — has done little more than stabilize the sector around 9%. Agriculture has ducked under 2%. Health/education has doubled to 15%. And retail? Its share of jobs is remarkably thermostatic. Three decades ago, retail was 11% of the economy. Today, it’s … 11% of the economy. When you deal with supersectors, you tend to lump a lot of important small numbers together. “Retail” isn’t one big store. It’s millions of stores in hundreds of categories, from pet food to jewelry to tire dealers. But let’s start to get specific. Retail’s three largest sub-sectors  — supermarkets, department stores, and warehouse clubs like Costco and Sam’s Club that sell in bulk — account for a third of retail workers. These are three very different species of retail, and they’re going in very different directions.  Read more.  [Image: Economic Modeling Specialists]

Is it Really the End of Retail?

Hey, there’s something you should know about the end of retail: It’s not really the end of retail. […]

Here’s what I see: Manufacturing’s in a free fall. Even its recent recovery — 400,000 new jobs in two years — has done little more than stabilize the sector around 9%. Agriculture has ducked under 2%. Health/education has doubled to 15%. And retail? Its share of jobs is remarkably thermostatic. Three decades ago, retail was 11% of the economy. Today, it’s … 11% of the economy. 

When you deal with supersectors, you tend to lump a lot of important small numbers together. “Retail” isn’t one big store. It’s millions of stores in hundreds of categories, from pet food to jewelry to tire dealers. But let’s start to get specific. 

Retail’s three largest sub-sectors  — supermarkets, department stores, and warehouse clubs like Costco and Sam’s Club that sell in bulk — account for a third of retail workers. These are three very different species of retail, and they’re going in very different directions. 

Read more.  [Image: Economic Modeling Specialists]

5:07pm
(Notes: 12)
  
Filed under: Retail Business Jobs Economy 
April 20, 2012
Dunkin Donuts’ Employee Surveillance Cut Thefts Up to 13% Surveillance technology isn’t just for the FBI and local law enforcement. Corporations see all kinds of potential for combining cheap recording equipment with other types of data collection.  For example, fast food joints, or “quick service restaurants,” as they are known in the trade, lose up to seven percent of sales to employee theft, according to the National Restaurant Association. Now, these retailers are fighting back with surveillance systems that allow them to keep track of their employees every move and punch of the register. Already, 90 percent of retailers monitor their staffs with video cameras, but combining the visuals with data from the register makes these systems much more powerful. […] All those little things that retail employees do? They’re open to algorithmic and video inspection. It’s a bad time to be an immature teenager working at Dunkin Donuts.  There’s nothing wrong with that, per se. Of course companies want to reduce the number of employees who steal from them. But some part of me squirms at this pervasive and increasingly intelligent monitoring. Would I really want my boss to have always-on recordings not just of my body but my keystrokes? Would you? Read more. [Image: Megan Garber]

Dunkin Donuts’ Employee Surveillance Cut Thefts Up to 13%

Surveillance technology isn’t just for the FBI and local law enforcement. Corporations see all kinds of potential for combining cheap recording equipment with other types of data collection. 

For example, fast food joints, or “quick service restaurants,” as they are known in the trade, lose up to seven percent of sales to employee theft, according to the National Restaurant Association. Now, these retailers are fighting back with surveillance systems that allow them to keep track of their employees every move and punch of the register. Already, 90 percent of retailers monitor their staffs with video cameras, but combining the visuals with data from the register makes these systems much more powerful. […]

All those little things that retail employees do? They’re open to algorithmic and video inspection. It’s a bad time to be an immature teenager working at Dunkin Donuts. 

There’s nothing wrong with that, per se. Of course companies want to reduce the number of employees who steal from them. But some part of me squirms at this pervasive and increasingly intelligent monitoring. Would I really want my boss to have always-on recordings not just of my body but my keystrokes? Would you?

Read more. [Image: Megan Garber]

1:55pm
(Notes: 14)
  
Filed under: Retail Theft Surveillance Tech Privacy 
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