Fighting for digital expertise

Employment in the retail sector has been in the news over the past few weeks with the headlines highlighting the dramatic forecast that one million jobs will be lost from the industry by 2025. Whatever the ultimate figure, there is clearly going to be some big changes taking place – with the big driver digital.…

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UK department should take a leaf out of Nordstrom playbook

Upmarket US-based department store Nordstrom was founded in 1901 but it hasn’t lost its mojo and become the equivalent of UK TV’s sitcom store Grace Brothers from Are You Being Served?  Rather the opposite in fact as it has become the go-to store for cutting edge pure-play retailers looking to gain exposure to bricks and…

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Reductions in retail employment far from a done deal

Recent figures from the BRC predicting that the number of people employed in the retail sector will reduce from a present three million to nearer two million by 2025 paints a very worrying picture. In the same way that retailers are having to completely overhaul their IT infrastructures, they are also embarking on serious reinventions…

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Social media sceptics need to revisit their thinking

Retailers continue to grapple with social media. For every organisation that regards it as a distraction, there is one that fully embraces it and uses it as a key tool for engaging with customers. The former camp will argue that it is it is difficult to put forward a business case for committing serious resources…

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Revolution in retail employment

Online sales continue to grow at a fair clip – from a present base of 10-15% of total sales across the whole retail industry – and with this, the landscape for employment in the sector is at the early stages of a revolution. Until this point retailers have used rubber bands and sticky tape to…

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