Spend five minutes with Kim Williams and you’ll get the sense she’s like your best friend, guidance counselor and room mother all rolled in to one. She is also an incredibly savvy businesswoman who worked her way up in a retail department store after graduating from college, took off a few years to raise her [...]
Susan Kaufman and I have quite a bit in common. We both grew up in small Central Illinois towns. We both pursued journalism before finding our true passion in retail. And, well, we both love wine. Small town retailers are making a big impact on their community, and Kaufman’s shop is no exception. She’s been [...]
National Retail Federation President and CEO Matthew Shay joined U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue, Business Roundtable President John Engler and National Association of Manufacturers President Jay Timmons for a Leading Authorities’ “Conversations with Power” panel discussion on the 2012 elections, the economy and the looming “fiscal cliff.” The executive-level conversation centered on the [...]
We learned a lot about our This is Retail winners when we met in person this May in Washington. And even though some of us spent an 18-hour day with them soaking up everything we could learn (and trotting them all around the nation’s capital – with blisters to prove it), they still seem to [...]
ARTS may only be 19 years young, but Richard Mader has been around for it all. Mader served as its chairman on a voluntary basis for more than five years before accepting the challenge of making it the preeminent retail standards association as part of NRF. As a retail technology veteran in his past professional [...]
As we all learned in civic class, a crucial part of the political process is participation. At NRF we advocate on your behalf in Washington and make sure retail’s priorities are known. Amidst the continuous noise of numerous industries fighting to be heard by policymakers, we are working to make retail’s voice stand out. To [...]
As the economy continues to crawl along and new mandates from Washington are being proposed or beginning implementation, workforce management issues are incredibly important for retailers. That’s why next week in Dallas, senior human resources and employment law executives from some of the nation’s top companies, including Ann Inc., Domino’s, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Pier 1 [...]
The nuances for retailers to go mobile can be daunting; the opportunities, seemingly endless. When it comes to integrating apps or tablets into an in-store selling strategy, the prospect of mobile optimization can empower associates to enhance customer service and interaction. But on the road to implementation, utilizing solution provider expertise to map infrastructure idiosyncrasies, [...]
The only story greater than a company’s success during tough economic times is the steps they take to revamp their presence in the industry. In the story of Pier 1, the home and furniture retailer’s e-commerce presence needed a makeover. The solution, SVP and CIO Andrew Laudato said, started with ARTS. This was the background [...]