Crowds are following Marvin Ellison around these days.
When the J.C. Penney CEO spoke to a gathering of Dallas retail executives on a Wednesday night in September, the turnout was a couple hundred people, more than the local industry group usually gets.
The same thing happened earlier last month at the Goldman Sachs Annual Global Retailing Conference. The half-empty room filled up when it was Ellison’s turn at the podium.
He’ll be talking to the retail industry again Thursday afternoon at the Texas A&M Retailing Summit at the Westin Galleria in Dallas.
Ellison is spreading the word about what’s next for J.C. Penney after his predecessor, Mike Ullman, stabilized a company that had been on the brink of disaster.
“We have not arrived, but we have left,” is the way he phrases where Penney stands in its turnaround efforts.
Perhaps Penney has been too broad in defining who its customer really is, he said. “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.”
His point is that retailers can dilute their focus, and Penney may have done that as it tried to be “the favorite department store for middle America.”
His strategy: focus on fostering customer loyalty.
Some 87 million customers that Penney had before former CEO Ron Johnson’s attempt to reinvent the department store have returned. But other shopping habits they acquired during 2012-13 when Penney lost $6 billion in sales are hurting the chain now.
‘In the wilderness’
Ellison calls that period “18 months in the wilderness” and said he was shocked to find that local store data about product assortments had been wiped out and systems had been unplugged.
And while every other retailer was fixated on its “omnichannel” — creating a seamless shopping experience across stores and online — Penney’s online business was ignored.
The company has a massive network of distribution centers, a legacy from its catalog days, but Ellison said he found systems that don’t talk to each other and other technical issues. That’s hurting the company’s plans to make shopping more seamless for the customer, both online and in stores.
Penney is behind, he said, on online shopping conveniences like same-day, in-store pickup for online purchases.
Ellison’s first big moves when he took over as CEO in August were to bring in new people to head up the supply chain and the omnichannel.
Penney’s customers are shopping less frequently, and when they do come into the store, they buy less, Ellison said.
These days, everyone has a loyalty program that rewards customers for spending.
Ellison plans to change Penney’s program, which he says is “very confusing, costs us a lot of money and the customer hates it.”
A new one will be launched next year, he said.
“We have great data; we just aren’t using it,” Ellison said.
The company is trying to convert more of its marketing from print to digital. It’s a tough sell inside the company, which was also the case when he was at Home Depot, he said.
“Our marketing has to be more specialized,” he said. “Part of the effort to get more customers to spend more with us will require more focused messages.”
Building brands
In the stores, the company is rebranding its salons with In Style magazine and adding more beauty brands and products. It recently created a private brand to compete with fast-fashion retailers.
Penney has always been a destination for special sizes, including children’s, petites and plus sizes for women. To capitalize on that, Penney is adding more fashion to its women’s plus-size business, upgrading styles and adding brands such as Levi and Bisou Bisou.
This week, Penney opened a new in-store concept, branding its plus-size department the Boutique. Twelve stores are testing the Boutiques, which range from 3,000 to 5,000 square feet. The chain plans to add it to more stores next spring, and the Boutique is also online.
Penney’s store at Town East Mall in Mesquite was the first to get the expanded selection locally. Penney is also adding plus sizes to juniors, said Siiri Dougherty, senior vice president over women’s and salons.
“It’s an underserved market, and we’re good at it, but we can be even better,” Dougherty said.
At the center
Ellison also wants to work on the middle of the stores. The Sephora shops can feel like an oasis into the desert, he said. Penney wants to position neighboring departments in a way that makes sense to that shopper.
He’s also on board with an initiative Ullman started while he was CEO to separate men’s and women’s shoe departments.
“You don’t have to be a great merchant to know men don’t like to try on shoes next to women,” he said.
Penney needs to give customers more reasons to shop there, Ellison said.
“We know who we are, and we’re not ashamed of us. The customer loves us, and we need to love them back,” he said.
Source: Dallas News
Article by Maria Halkias, Staff Writer
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THE PRINTERVERSE – Print professionals around the world are being encouraged to participate in International Print Day 2015 (IPD15), a global 24-hour event being held Wednesday, October 14, 2015, in which social media will be used to highlight the creativity, importance and power of print and paper.
The theme for this year’s International Print Day is “#PrintNOW.” Along with #IPD15, that hashtag has been designated for all print professionals to use when they share examples of print on social media such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, YouTube and others. Commercial printers, print buyers, paper mills, graphic designers, book publishers, marketers and manufacturers are urged to participate in this global sharing event.
“Produced a cool project recently? Used new paper or substrates? Share and tag it! Have new equipment? Wrapped a vehicle? Share and tag it! Designed something spectacular? Saw some spectacular print out in the world? Been to a great print event or tradeshow? Show everyone through pictures, videos and posts and share away!” exclaimed Deborah Corn, Principal at Print Media Centr, and founder of International Print Day.
Using the hashtags #IPD15 and #PrintNOW, print professionals and anyone associated with the printing industry are encouraged to flood social media channels with education, facts, and fun stuff related to print and paper. International Print Day 2014 resulted in 8,683 Tweets delivered to 23,023,968 timelines with 1,271 contributors. IPD 2015 organizers expect those numbers to be crushed this year.
“#PrintNOW encapsulates the state of the industry and all of the amazing advances in print, paper and marketing technology we are creating and implementing to help customers. #PrintNOW also serves as a call to action for marketing professionals – and even consumers – to include printed materials in their communications mix,” Corn added.
Companies are also encouraged to share information about their related products and services, though a strategic approach is always suggested. International Print Day 2015 is an amazing opportunity for everyone in the print, paper, design and marketing industry to tell the world how they bring value to their customers by sharing their print success stories.
Allied Printing (http://www.alliedprinting.com) created a #PrintNOW logo that can be downloaded from the International Print Day 2015 website. For that, the IPD15 logo and more information about International Print Day 2015, please visit http://www.internationalprintday.org
Source: WhatTheyThink?
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eCommerce is growing at an alarming pace in India and has been making remarkable impact all over the country. India is a billion people nation with web mobile penetration of over 60%. In the next couple of years, we can see that everyone will move online for business.
A majority of our population is very young, which exhibits energy to build and adopt anything new coming their way so a new retail format is expected to have a very fast adoption rate. With the advent of m-commerce, we can see a great opportunity being placed for mobile. It allows and encourages the consumers to browse quickly, easily and purchase products on-the-go, more regularly.
It’s a strong belief that the mobile growth and with the availability of cheaper data plans across telecom brands, digital will grow and the gifting industry in India will soon skip plastic to move towards adopting digital gift cards.
Gift cards are pre-paid cards that can be used to make payments. Such cards have a validity period, which can be replenished with funds and reused within the period. Gift Cards are different from gift vouchers, which are paper-based and can be used only once, while purchasing products. Unlike gift cards, gift vouchers do not allow any partial redemption, wherein balance funds can be carried over for further purchases.
Manufacturing gift cards involve costs of plastic, magnetic strips, and card readers, however, this is changing as consumer’s demand and large retailers are moving towards digital gift cards. Digital gift card is a simple replacement of the paper/plastic gift cards, with a code. The code will be verified and the value attached to it is deducted from the digital card.
As per the stats, earlier, digital gift cards contributed to 7%; recently it has gone up to 17%. We can see the rise in digital gift cards as the consumer preferences and demand is higher for brands and stores and also allows offering a variety of gifting options. Brands like Lifestyle, Flipkart, Dominos, Tanishq are said to experience a consistent demand round the year and largely, during the festival season.
Most precisely, we can see the gift cards / digital gift cards trend booming in the West. Indians are avoiding the hassle of chasing for suitable gifts for each occasion; hence opt for gift cards. This is significantly helping the modern retail in boosting such transactions during the festive season.
Transactions through gift cards are expected to increase from 50% to 80% during October-December. With the increase in demand for gift cards, we can see the change in the Indian consumers’ opinions and preferences. In addition to this, the retailers are too comfortable with the homecoming of the gifts card as the sales are aiming to increase the billing value for transactions paid through gift cards.
The online gifting space, like any other industry, has certain challenges to face. The assurance of same day or fix date delivery, for example, throws up logistical issues that any eCommerce company/s face in terms of manpower and delivery transport etc. Hence, it is imperative for any portals to come up with variety that surprises the buyer as well as the receiver of the gift. In the hectic schedules, a beautifully gift wrapped present can rejuvenate any relation or help maintain the existing ones. The demand for gifts is sure to continue stimulating the online gifting segment significantly.
Online and offline retailers now should collectively view gifting as an opportunity to reach out to their target consumers and promote their brands at almost no extra cost with the help of social media. This social gifting concept is widespread in foreign countries. Considering the digital growth in India, we can see that social gifting will soon be introduced.
Post m-commerce, social commerce will speed up and more people will be connected via social media websites. Retailers will have a major advantage as gifting will give them the chance to engage with its targeted consumers and get timely feedback.
Source: iamwire.com
Article by Firoz Khan, Co-founder and CEO, Gift Cards India
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