I'd run what I now call a "Merchandise Dynamics" project for a brand. This brand was struggling, badly. When I looked at the data, it was obvious that the Merchandise Executive made two classic merchandising mistakes. The Executive discontinued items that customers enjoyed. The Executive failed to find new items that were compelling ... both under-utilizing new item and sourcing new items that performed worse than new items performed historically. It's common for a brand to survive new item missteps. It's uncommon for a brand to thrive when discontinuing items that customers enjoyed. I pr ..read more

The number of gas stations has been in decline for four decades, maybe longer. Those that stayed in business did stuff like Casey's General Store did ... convenience grocery, pizza, fried chicken, you get the picture. So yeah, those that stayed in business decided to siphon off some of the Twinkies and Fritos and Large Pepsi drinks sold by other folks. Of course, if you run a gas station, there is a cliff that your business model is eventually going to plunge into. Electric Vehicles. What do you do when the customer charges his/her car at home instead of purchasing gas at a Casey's? I g ..read more

Back in the 2001-2002 timeframe, I'd invite our list partners to a once-a-year summit. I'd line up some Executives to communicate the direction we were headed in as a brand, I'd share out department-level plans, and I'd ask each list partner to present how they thought our brand should evolve and how their brand could help us with that. I recall in 2002 that the Executive from a co-op shared during her presentation that we needed, and I quote, to be "more Omnichannel". She wanted the same merchandise in all printed materials, and she wanted all customers to see the same merchandise. Same price ..read more

At every company, there are the people who appear to be in control (Owner, Board of Directors, CEO, Executive Team). Then there are the people who are actually in control. The old-timer who "knows where the bodies are buried" and says "no" to things and nobody understands how she's able to get away with saying "no", for instance. Every company has one of those. Merchants have disproportionate control, and rightly so. Creative folks have minimal control within a company but are the face of the brand to the customer. As such, they control far more than they realize. It's always dangerous to outs ..read more

You want to see a completely tepid, bland, homogenized shopping experience? Yes! Ok! Tell me the brands that are represented here. Good luck! I'm not going to tell you the answer. It's the same darn presentation. This is awful. Same web development tools, same analytics packages communicating the same conversion rates, all praised by digital gurus who love it when brands adhere to "best practices". It's not a best practice if everything looks this ... the same. It's tepid. It's time for a change ..read more

I'll show how this relates to commerce in a moment. Ok - NASCAR - last Sunday, they raced at Martinsville. A fun track. A half mile. Too many cars for the track. Normally cars are passing, and more importantly, cars are being lapped all over the place. Action. But on Sunday, nobody wrecked, nobody passed, and consequently nothing happened. Fans are fed up. NASCAR created a new car a few years ago where most of the car cannot be adjusted and the parts are the same for every car. In other words, the cars are the same. And if the cars are the same, they go the same speed, which means nobody can p ..read more

It will only take ten minutes out of your day - enjoy this video about Merchandise Dynamics and the "Class Of" Table that you've seen me discuss often over the past eleven years (click here). For those of you who want a larger image of the table in the video, here you go (click on the image ..read more

Yesterday we talked about a brand that had stalled ... from about $57 million four years ago to $53 million today. And yet, our 30,000 foot view of the Class Of Report didn't really illustrate a glaring problem. Sure, prices had increased, but there wasn't a merchandise class where new items appeared to be failing and there didn't seem to be a huge issue with existing items being discontinued. Let's drill down a bit. Now we're at around 18,000 feet ... that's where the jet stream does a lot of work. Can we see anything by looking at new/existing items and items selling at/above vs. below their ..read more

Here's a "Class Of" Report for a Brand I studied ... it's for the total brand, looking at a high level ... 30,000 feet high. And yet, the stories begin to speak to us. Click on the image to make it bigger. The top portion of the table shows us what top-line demand looks like by annual merchandise class. This brand is contracting ... from $54.6 million to $56.8 million three years ago ... then problems begin, down to $55.0 million, then $54.2 million, then $52.8 million. This is the point where people usually decide to hire me (you might be in that boat ... here's project pricing as an FYI&nb ..read more

Let's look at a "Class Of" merchandising report for a brand. Tell me what you see (hint - look at the colored cells in the table). Somebody messed up. The class of merchandise from two years ago generated only $2.6 million in demand. That year, the brand contracted from $35.6 million to $34.2 million. That's where the overreaction happened. Somebody decided to discontinue a whole bunch of existing items (look at the old class of items from 4+ years ago), and the results were predictably awful ... those items dropped from $27.1 million to $15.5 million, tanking the brand. However, a bunch o ..read more