As much as I love the experience of shopping in physical retail stores, the thrill of online shopping is undeniable. The ability to browse nearly limitless selections, styles, colors, brands and trends all from the comfort of your couch is enough to satiate your inner shopaholic. And the ability to buy products with just a few taps or clicks? Effortless pleasure. But alluring as e-commerce is, there are a few reasons why I don’t believe it will ever replace bricks and mortar. Here is just one simple reason why:

Stuck indoors feeling under the weather (burdened with a cold and a rainy weekend), I opened my laptop to check some emails. Continue reading →

Diva is big on customer service. There is no amount of glitzy design that can overcome poor service. No matter how nice your store looks, if you offer the shopper subpar customer service, she won’t want to shop at your store. Case in point: Diva was at the mall last week (shocker, right?) meeting a friend for lunch. There was no real shopping mission in mind, just browsing a few stores during the lunch hour.

So, there Diva was at one of her favorite cosmetics and beauty stores. She had not planned to buy anything (her friend was the one in need of restocking lip gloss), but when standing in line noticed plenty of enticing little items on display bordering the queue, designed clearly as impulse purchases. Continue reading →

Savvy shopper alert! We clued you in when Millennials were using their parents’ disposable income to cash in on electronics and apparel, when seniors were reported to be one of the biggest markets to pay attention to and now we have breaking news about another highly savvy retail demographic.

Hispanic women are, according to a recent MegaTrends report by WSL/Strategic Retail, an important demographic to watch. In fact, Candace Corlett, president of WSL/Strategic Retail had this to say: “Hispanic women shop more creatively than other demographics, utilizing every savings opportunity to get what their families need at the lowest price.”

Looks like we could learn a thing or two by reviewing how Hispanic women handle the world of retail and shopping. Continue reading →

Everybody has their favorites. My mom swears up and down my little sister Alison isn’t her favorite, but we all know she is. I have my favorite pair of boots, favorite sushi roll (it’s the Alaskan if you must know) and favorite friend (that’s top secret info, of course).

Favorites are one of those things we can ascribe to virtually anything. Retail is not excluded from this. In fact, we even have an “America’s Favorite Fashion Retailer” designation.

And by “we” I mean Market Force Information, which released its top favorite fashion retailers results earlier in the fall. Market Force interviewed approximately 7,000 consumers in North America asking for their favorite retailer from a list of 91 national chains. Continue reading →

It was a lovely summer evening as one of my good friends and I strolled into Lush Cosmetics. With no plans to buy, we sauntered around smelling this and that, when a lovely woman named Jordan approached us. She wanted to know if we would be interested in a hand massage.

Uh, who could say no to that?

During, she told us all about the yummy products she was using as she cleansed, exfoliated and moisturized our dry, summer hands. She was passionate about the products, inquisitive about us as people and never once tried to sell us anything.

We both walked out of Lush with more than $50 in purchases made. Continue reading →