On The Other Side Of The Ocean, The Old Way Of Saving Oneself Is Also Different.

This year, the overall depression of traditional retail department stores has prompted Messi stores and WAL-MART to open a closed shop plan.

While closing down the low performing stores, the department stores that have completed the whole channel retail integration have begun to return to the profit based thinking mode, and strive to find the balance of growth between e-commerce and offline stores.

Reverse thinking: offline department store acquisition

Retail companies, who are in the white hot competition stage, realize that full channel retailing has become the basic expectation of consumers in the Internet era.

The retail survey released by Forrester Research in mid February showed that 68% of the surveyed department stores increased investment in e-commerce technology from 2014 to 2015, and will continue to increase investment in 2016.

In the discount retail sector, offline department stores purchase similar products and locate similar electricity providers to achieve complementary resources.

Recently, Hudson Bay Company (Hudson 's Bay) bought Geert, a discount store in the United States, which pioneered flash shopping, and brought it into the discount store at Fifth Avenue, Fifth Avenue (Sakes Off Fifth).

At the beginning of the year, DSW, a famous shoe discount shop, bought a discount e-commerce website Ebuy and launched international distribution.

Compared with the self operated e-commerce business, the acquisition of the mature Ebuy has greatly reduced its difficulty in launching the international logistics service.

Nodes Tron is a high-end fashion retail companies headquartered in Seattle, USA.

There are 115 stores in the United States, 167 discount stores, and 2 stores in Canada.

In the full channel sales, Nodes Tron's strategy and continuous investment has been the benchmark in the industry.

There are two perfect online sales channels: low and medium end line Nordstromrack and high end line HauteLook, which supports free online shopping in the US, online ordering stores, and free return.

In July last year, Nord worked on the Trunk Club, which integrated designers' clothing for consumers. While expanding the resources of the trunk clubs, the trunk Club consumers were drained to Nodes Tron's offline store.

In August, special shopping channels were opened to fans on Instagram.

During the Christmas shopping season, eBay worked together to launch touchscreen fitting room technology.

5 years ago, online sales accounted for only 8% of total sales. As of January 2016, online sales accounted for 20% of the company's total sales.

However, in the fourth quarter of February earnings conference in February, Michael G. Koppel, the chief financial officer, said: "the continuous investment in science and technology, the cost of marketing and the cost of implementation have made the cost of expanding our market share too high.

In recent years, the cost growth has far exceeded the sales growth rate.

From January 2015 to January 2016, the company's operating costs increased by 10%, leading directly to the company's profit falling to $600 million, down 17% from the same period last year.

Although Nodes Tron has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in e-commerce related technology in recent years, a large part of the inventory management system and distribution personnel management has been applied. In the fourth quarter of 2015, the inventory growth rate (12%) is still higher than the sales growth rate (5.2%), while the fourth quarter profit has dropped by 29.4%.

A week after the meeting, Nord laid off the top 10 technical teams and said he would control the scale of e-commerce projects.

Although the inventory management will continue to be optimized through technology investment in the future, inventory will be able to simultaneously meet the expansion of stores and the growth of online sales.

But the planned 1 billion investment for technology in 2016 will be reduced to 900 million, and the total technical input of the 5 year plan will be reduced by 300 million.

In addition to increasing investment to full channel sales, the old department stores have also chosen to shut down the flat shops to reduce the operating costs.

Turnover, operating costs, and other stores nearby are all considerations.

Last year, Messi stores closed 40 stores with poor performance.

(SEARS) plans to close 50 physical stores this year, and more than half of the 1253 entities in the company will expire in five years.

Cole, based in Wisconsin, will close 18 stores this summer, the first time that the company has closed so many 52 years since its establishment.

In a recent study by BDO USA, an audit firm, 37% of the surveyed department stores said that after the strategic investment in the Internet and mobile terminals between 2014 and 2015, profits will be increased in 2016 by reducing inventory and adjusting product and store structure.

In the Internet era, consumers use time more efficiently than before.

Jesse Pani (J.C.Penny) adjusted the placement of the store products.

"We want our customers to find the clothes they want as quickly and as quickly as possible."

In addition, we began to learn from the supermarket mode and began to provide trolleys and baskets in some hundred stores.

Colls's physical stores will reduce inventories by 10%.

At the same time, 7 additional experimental entities will be added, which will be less than 1/2 of the traditional stores. The inventory will reduce the hot sales of online sales, so as to complement the products on the line.

In 2015, Messi store opened 6 discount stores, Backstage.

The discount store has its exclusive brand and Messi store's original price store brand, and its price is in the 20%-80% of the original product of Messi department store.

This spring, Messi stores will try the concept of "shop in store" and set up 15 "backstage" stores in existing stores. This attempt can also test the extent to which discount stores will divert the sales of original department stores.

In order to improve unit profits, Nord hopes to improve the profit by adjusting the price matching of different prices.

Nord, a first-rate brand in Waterloo in 2015, is considering replacing its own brand with sales rising.

If it has been established for only three years, it has already had a turnover of Tucker $50 million + Tate.

At the same time, Nord will further develop brand specialization, such as MadeWell, the flagship of the female Hippie cowboy, to attract more iron powder.

Social media marketing

Since last weekend,

A wave of promotions was launched in Twitter: only 1 cents for some designated products.

After purchasing a commodity at the original price, the non designated goods can also be handed at 1 cents.

In an interview with NBC, Jesse Pani has not yet revealed which products are within the specified range, and specific information will be updated in twitter, hoping that consumers can come to department stores to spend more on promotional information.

What is known now is that all 1 cents can be bought by Jesse Pani's own brand.

"The products we buy will be the products we pride on."

In the social media marketing strategy, most department stores choose to publish interesting, sharing stories and videos for marketing, in order to increase interaction.

Only Nodes Tron clearly defined social networking sites as the traffic entrance of his online shopping platform.

Whether Facebook or Twitter, the daily update is a unified style: a picture, a product description, and a product link.

At the same time, it maintains frequent and stable interaction with all users mentioned in Facebook and Twitter.

In addition, Nodes Tron also regularly releases consumer favorite products and matching on visual social networking site Pinterest.

And the most popular single product in Pinterest will be attached to the "P" logo online when it is displayed online.

Last year, Nord launched the product list of Christmas shopping season ahead of schedule in Pinterest.

Of course, all these pictures have links to their online shopping platforms.

The advantage of the electricity supplier is that after ordering, the advantage of traditional department stores is before consumption. This is especially evident in clothing department stores.

Data predict that by 2024, 85% of the volume of pactions will still come from physical stores.

However, changes in the sales environment of the physical store will have a huge impact on the retail industry practitioners.

Under the current retail labor structure, only 30% of their labor time is spent on customer service and sales, and the remaining 70% of the time is spent on operational matters.

And when department stores spread all channel sales business, the pressure of dealing with online orders, online ordering stores and taking back products and maintaining online photo display is more intense.

At the same time, customers who still choose to come to the store have put forward higher requirements for the business level of shopping guide.

A study by Tulip Retail shows that nearly 70% of consumers will not consume in the absence of senior shopping guide.

On the contrary, up to 90% of customers will be accompanied by senior shopping guides, of whom 97% will purchase products other than planned.

There is no doubt that all channel sales require the retail industry to adjust the labor distribution in the physical store.

EKN, a Retail Market Research Institute, proposed that in the future department stores should consider outsourcing business services to third parties, so that the staff in the entity stores should focus on improving the customer service level.