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First Edition
For decades, futurists have been talking about a time when robots would be widespread, doing everything from cleaning homes to serving food at restaurants. That vision hasn’t materialized at the pace originally thought, but artificial intelligence, mobility and connectivity have made robots more advanced than ever.
NRF is proud to provide our members with the online Retail Buying Guide to search for trusted vendors, products and services in the retail industry. Our guide is a user-friendly forum designed to bring suppliers and purchasers together. You can search by keyword, location, company name or category. Available whenever you need it, the Retail Buying Guide makes it easy to locate products and professional services geared to the retail industry. Click here to visit the online Retail Buying Guide! To advertise, please contact Sarah Allen for more information. 
Ecommerce, a major factor in most retail categories these days, is still very much a minority activity in groceries, but that doesn’t mean consumers don’t want it. United Supermarkets began offering a choice of delivery or buy online, pick up in store in November 2016, and is “seeing triple-digit, year-over-year increases,” says Chris Farr, ecommerce manager.
Green Growth Brands is swiftly opening a variety of retail brands selling cannabis and CBD products targeted to specific customer types, intending to give each brand mass appeal through different emotional positionings. CEO Peter Horvath says the company focuses on customers from the time they pull into a parking lot to the time they leave the store.
The digital edition of STORES includes must-read pieces, including the articles featured here. Read the current issue and browse the archives for issues you may have missed.
Remember the old adage “don’t believe everything you read”? Today the axiom remains true: Despite more effective policing, in many ways the internet still resembles the wild west. Products and services that are actually inferior are given false four- or five-star ratings to trick the trusting consumer. This digital sleight of hand can also be used to trash competitors with deceptively negative reviews, robbing a quality brand of hard-earned business.
Trends
New research says consumers worry about using credit cards at gas pumps but still prefer plastic over cash when paying for a fill-up. A study of 1,270 adults by YouGov and ACI Worldwide found that 62 percent of adults are worried about financial data security when paying at the pump. Mobile apps aren’t the solution, with only 7 percent saying they prefer to pay that way.
Crocs has teamed up with Japanese clothing brand Beams for the ultimate mash-up in comfort kitsch: The pairing puts fanny packs on the traditional Crocs. While we might make fun, Crocs is having a bit of a moment with younger shoppers. Post Malone, the genre-bending rapper and producer, teamed with Crocs for two collaborations in 2018, both selling out in minutes.
NRF News
“Fewer, Better Things” is the slogan for Cuyana, a San Francisco-based ecommerce retailer that has found a market niche by selling high-quality, handmade goods. On this episode of NRF’s Retail Gets Real podcast, co-founder and CEO Karla Gallardo discusses how the business was born, the journey to opening stores and how to grow a brand built on trust. Listen and subscribe.
The National Retail Federation will name Kohl’s CEO Michelle Gass as “The Visionary,” an award given annually to an outstanding leader in the retail industry, during the sixth annual NRF Foundation Honors on January 12, 2020, in New York City. “Michelle has cultivated an environment at Kohl’s where risk-taking is encouraged, which has never been more important than in today’s dynamic retail environment,” said NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay.
NRF regularly brings together powerful women — retail industry icons and thought leaders — to share their experiences. Retailers can meet some of the visionary women in the industry as they present real-world case studies and strategic insights at the NRF NXT conference in Las Vegas later this month. Read more.
Retail Deals
To grow and optimize retail operations in its Rock Shop stores, Hard Rock International has partnered with Retalon, a provider of advanced retail predictive analytics and artificial intelligence solutions.
Service Management Group, a global customer experience management, employee experience and brand research partner, is working with global beauty products retailer Sally Beauty to uncover customer insights and drive engagement across touchpoints.
Albertsons Companies, one of the largest food and drug retailers in the United States, is working with Toshiba to advance the grocer’s consumer-centric checkout experiences. Food Lion is now offering its “Food Lion To-Go" grocery pick up service at multiple locations to deliver on its promise to ensure an easy, fresh and affordable grocery shopping experience, and allow customers to order and pick up their groceries in as little as an hour.
SpotOn Transact LLC, an innovative payments and software company, is extending its partnership with TSYS, which will enable SpotOn to expand payments capabilities to merchants and go deeper in the small- and medium-sized business space.
Rite Aid Corporation has entered into a strategic partnership with Adobe to deliver seamless, personalized and connected health and wellness experiences for Rite Aid customers via Adobe Experience Cloud, an end-to-end solution for experience creation, marketing, advertising, analytics and commerce. |
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