Hot Retail Trends In 2010!

I was in the Big Apple last week for the National Retail Federations Big Show at the Javits center. Nearly 20,000 people with something to do with retail from the C level (CEO, CIO, CMO) executives, to service providers, to the media everyone was focused on retail and grateful the holidays werent worse than the previous year. Ive done my predictions previously so here are some of the current trends in retail I picked up on.

Big Box Retailers Have Given Up On The Browsers; Consumers Are Now Seen As Mission Shoppers. They have to be able to get in quick and get out. Its like the Internet has been overlaid on the sales floor. Nowhere could this be more evident than the new touch screen interface from Intel.

Their Intelligent Digital Signage Concept Proof of Concept presents HD video streams on two separate displays. This signage recognizes customers gender and height using video analytics and then immerses customers into a rich multi-touch environment. They claim this gives retailers attractive tools that can help create targeted, personal and effective customer connections. Makes me wonder if they came up with the idea from the Tom Cruise movie, Minority Report.

What I got from it was a giant store directory that, seeing you were a man lets say, would automatically pop up with the mens sections of a store and show off sale items. What theyll do with transgendered folks or men with long hair or women with a Rachel Maddow haircut is beside the point. Information is a good thing right?

The trouble with mission shoppers is there is no magic to the experience youre just filling a pre-existing need. Great merchandising is getting people to stop and discover your merch, not see your store as Tron or look at the palm of their hand. Great retail is about looking around the store, finding your way, being interrupted by a great display that shows how several products can mix together.

Big Brother Is Indeed Watching You. Best Buy touted how they use cookies on peoples computers to monitor where a customer goes after they land on their site. For example, if you were looking at plasma TVs, clicked off to ESPN or YES network then came back to the Best Buy site, you would be shown a banner ad tailored to sports. If it were HGTV it might show you an ad for a vacuum. When one woman asked the marketing representative of Best Buy if there were privacy issues they faced she said, No. When the questioner followed up with, How could that be if you are tracking sites visited? She said they used service providers who kept everything legal. Hmmm.

Blog Readers Rock! At the opening reception, longtime blog-reader Mike Murray, Director from Caliber Interactions found me and thanked me for my blog, You stated the value proposition of mystery shopping better than Ive seen anyone do. I also had owners, Directors and managers waiting for me after sessions to chat about their business who recognized me from this blog. If you have something to say blogs are a great vehicle to connect with people in your industry!

Online Learning is Only Good For Product Knowledge. In various buttonhole meetings it seemed many had tried online learning but found that experiential training, the kind I present to retailers, is the only way to move sales. Otherwise, the learning just doesnt seem to stick. They can read the text but that is hard to pickup, monitor or duplicate so retailers need to create safe educational learning where they can role-play and get immediate feedback.

Merchandising and Sales Skills Have Deteriorated. On Tuesday, I was having lunch with Gordon Segal, Founder of Crate & Barrel and his team. I thought the only way retailers will succeed with so many identical competitors in an overcrowded marketplace was to invest in sales training of the crew. Youre right, he said. We had to sell back in the 60s and 70s, that has been lost. Winston Weber had said earlier that day that, Merchandising skills have dropped over the past 25 years. We need to re-teach the basics. Amen to that!

Accidental Businesses Can Prosper. Life is Good shirts started as an antidote to negativity. The Jacobs brothers sold t-shirts for five years with no success. When they came up with the design of Jake and the words, Life is good, they sold 48 of the new designs in 45 minutes back in 1994. That may not seem like much but it was enough validation to them to go with it. Thereafter, anything that celebrated life Jake could do. They expanded their company by celebrating the simple things in life hiking, fishing, ice cream. They found a niche by accident and grew sales from $87,000 to over a billion dollars in sales. John Jacobs is an Amiable personality that built on his natural inclination to be with people and created a company focused on people and helping people. His story was worth the cost of the convention registration alone.

Online Retailers Are Looking To Get Into the Bricks and Mortar. With so many stores looking to bring their business online (which Ill tell you about next time,) I was fascinated by the online retail CEOs sharing their plans to expand out from virtual reality to storefronts. One told me, We can give a better experience for our brand through people. No names given but this could be interesting to watch.

Social Media Continues To Get Rave Reviews For the Isolated Stories. There are a certain segment of Feeler personalities that are happy to volunteer their time as brand ambassadors. They are the golden rings for many retail marketers who have scads of fans on Facebook and followers on Twitter. Are these consumers who get off bragging about connecting to large brands (did you know Tide laundry detergent has 300,000 Facebook fans) really driving sales or just an experiment? Everyone is looking for their ROI (return on investment) when it comes to social media. James Bickers, Sr. Editor of Retail Customer Experience highlighted a woman upset her wedding dress hadnt arrived, Tweeting about it, Bloomingdales hyper-responsive responses, day saved and customer happy. But is that really great customer service? Which leads me to my final point.

Great Customer Service These Days Is About Fixing Things Gone Wrong Or Getting Your Way. Its like a spoiled child being listened to. Is that great customer service? I dont think so but from the NRF awards, thats, what was rewarded. Great customer service is an experience so tangible, so connected to another human being from the start that the shopping experience with another human being stands head and shoulders above any experience the customer had that day at work, at home or in the mall. So exceptional that the shopper felt compelled to tell others how remarkable it was to friends, family and co-workers and then yes, posted it on Facebook or Twitter. Thats the mark of customer service from a customer standpoint.

From a merchant stand point it is to sell the merch so convincingly that the customer doesnt even know the interaction follows a process (like my Sales RX: Five Parts to a Successful Sale) that builds the transaction, basket or average check while building a dynamic relationship with the salesperson and then the brand or store. Thats the trend we need to see more of or well see more people grasping at the straws of technology because its easy; not the foundations of great retail which is to sell the merch and that takes training.