Retailers strive to build strong performing workforces but with changing demographics and market trends, sustaining a strong workforce long term is becoming more and more challenging.
So how can a company better prepare to build a workforce for long term business success? It all starts with understanding which HR challenges are currently affecting retailers across Canada...
We've got details of Nordstrom's first Canadian store, including what departments and services will be included in its Chinook Centre location. Nordstrom's most expensive designer departments will be featured for womenswear, menswear, footwear and accessories, with prices into the thousands of dollars. Not all merchandise will be as costly, however, as moderately-priced departments will also be present. Children's clothing will be available at a variety of price points. A restaurant and a coffee bar will be featured, as will a variety of services that reinforce Nordstrom's reputation for exceptional customer service. We can also expect similar departments and services for other Canadian Nordstrom stores as they open over the next three years.
You’ve got the right placement, pricing and point-of-sale merchandising. But how do you know, at the store level, that each critical piece of your strategy is being executed correctly? How do you ensure proper execution of promotional displays, achieve new item planogram compliance or preempt risks for out-of-stocks? What if you could combine sophisticated retailer downstream data transformed into scientific out-of-stock alerts with local intelligence and serve it to your field and sales operations teams on a mobile device for immediate response, remediation and reporting?
Japanese fast-fashion retailer Uniqlo is working with a broker to open Canadian stores. Uniqlo's choice of American locations can be considered an indication of what it wants in Canada: prime retail space on busy streets and in prominent malls. Expect large Canadian Uniqlo flagships, as well as some smaller mall-based stores. However, its cautious American expansion foreshadows what's in store for Canada, at least in the short term, as only a handful of American cities see multiple Uniqlo locations. This will change, eventually, as Uniqlo's goal is to become the world's top-selling fashion retailer...
The Nuance Group is the first Canadian retailer to offer luxury Japanese skincare brand SK-II, recently introduced to Nuance's store location in Toronto's Pearson International Airport. Located in Terminal 1, SK-II is the latest beauty shop for Nuance, following its Jo Malone, Aveda and MAC Cosmetics boutiques, also located in Terminal 1.
The founding of SK-II is an interesting story. Over 30 years ago, it was observed that workers in a Japanese sake brewery had elderly faces but smooth, youthful hands. SK-II scientists spent five years studying more than 350 yeast strains to discover why, eventually discovering a nutrient-rich liquid which they named Pitera: now the 'secret key component' within SK-II’s products...
American watch and accessory brand Fossil continues its cross-Canada expansion. It is actively seeking retail space as it continues aggressively opening stores in various cities. Fossil recently opened five stores in just over one month, and it plans to operate 33 Canadian locations by the end of this year. It also just opened its Canadian flagship on Bloor Street in Toronto, which is a prototype for future locations...
You can fixate on the decline of brick & mortar retail all you want, but for the foreseeable future–in the vast majority of product categories–more than 90% of sales are still going to be done in physical stores...
About 80% of Hudson's Bay's flagship in-store merchandise will be available on its website by the end of this year, according to company president Liz Rodbell. Even more impressively, its website will offer a wider variety of sizes and colours than those available in-store. Hudson's Bay expects that more than 10% of its total revenues will come from online sales within the next four years, up from 3.5% this year. Despite these gains, Canada's Hudson's Bay website lags behind parent Hudson's Bay Company's (HBC) online initiatives in the United States...
Have you ever wondered how to make all your retail employees like your top 10%?
Surveying your current workforce and identifying your high and low performers will help you better understand what you need to drive better hires. Using tools such as employee assessments and performance summaries allow you to gain insights into the key areas high performers are succeeding in and their associated skills. Analyzing your low performers is also important because you can focus in on the areas that you think are causing them to lag behind their peers. The first step is to understand what differentiates these two groups is to focus on the variations in their skills, capabilities, personality traits, and behaviours...
