What: An opinion piece on the renewed relationships between department stores and brands

Why it is important:  This topic is now recurrently coming back in CEO talks about their current preoccupations.

Doug Stephens, author of the books Reeingeering Retail (see our review here) and Resurrecting Retail (see our review here) argues that bad retailers will never runout of customers looking for a bargain. However, this might imply going through the fate of the now defunct JC Penney. For the others retailers, they have to face a new reality: they need to partner more with brands, now that these ones have the possibility to go directly to their customers, just like what Nike is doing these days.

Faithful to his creeds, Stephens mentions that, in order to do so, retailers need to make sure that they keep on having a specific community of clients, cemented by a set of cultural, entertainment, expertise and products values. But having this community is not enough anymore to retain brands, as they expect also more value in their relationship: shared market intelligence, co-ownership of the customer relationship, clear storytelling and controlled prices.

The Existential Question Facing Every Retailer Today Retail Prophet, Opinion