First Retail, Author at First Retail

Data Analytics – from Big to Huge to Streaming

Good Data Strategy is at the heart of an efficient supply chain, effective store and e-store operations and an engaging customer relationship. In recent years retailers competed on analytics, ironing out cost in the supply chain, negotiating with vendors and creating loyalty programs and developing efficient decision support systems and vast data warehouses. The next…

Payments – The Re-Statement of Currency

Cash. Check. Finance. Credit. Micro-payments. Mobile Payments. Where next? Surely there can’t be many more variations on how a Customer is able to pay for their purchases. Now if we examine current trends online, not necessarily in e-commerce and look at what gets exchanged in a transaction, what emerges is not so much new forms…

Global Markets – When Supply and Demand Move Offshore

The last twenty years has seen ever more production moving offshore. The increase in shipping traffic bringing manufactured goods from developing to developed nations has grown, even through the recent recession there was only a slight dip with current predictions signaling recovery. However retailers looking for growth outside of stagnating domestic markets are building a…

Multi-channel – Stores, Online, Mobile and More

In 1999 I worked on a strategy to monetize interactive TV via a retailing proposition – this was expanded this to demonstrate a multi-channel concept with three pillars: Selection; Order; Fulfillment. Twelve years on this is reality with smart phones, tablets, streamed content and the full complement of retail fulfillment infrastructure. What is now lacking…

Business to Individual, the maturing of VRM

Sometime during the 70’s and 80’s the balance of power between retailers and suppliers shifted – this was best described in the 1999 book ‘StoreWars – The Battle for Mindspace and Shelfspace‘ – where both sides competed for the attention of the consumer and therefore power in the relationship that determine profit margins. Despite huge…

Author / First Retail