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Retail Brew

Brick & Mortar

Andrew Adam Newman

retailbrew.com

Nearly one in four (24.4%) online apparel orders are 

, and the most common reason, cited by 53% of clothing retailers, is fit, according to a 2023 Coresight Research report. That’s why clothing retailers are so bullish on online virtual try-on tools, with 27% reporting they already had them and another 58% planning to add them in the future, per Coresight.

Now Tote, a retail technology startup, has a solution that ensures online shoppers get the right size by enticing them to come to a store to try it on properly.

Daniel Nickel, founder and CEO of Tote, said the concept arose from his own frustration. Nickel, who lives in Brooklyn, once saw a jacket on J.Crew’s website, and walked into a J.Crew in Tribeca, only to be told that it wasn’t in stock but was in another location on the Upper East Side.

When he got home, he ordered four jackets from J.Crew online, expecting to return three but ultimately returning all four, an inconvenience for him and—particularly in the free returns and shipping era when this occurred—a major expense without a sale for the retailer.

“This was a pretty crappy experience, not just for me, the shopper who didn’t get what I wanted and then was saddled with these returns, but for the brand too, who missed out on a sale, who paid for shipping twice, and then paid the cost of reprocessing these items that are out of stock for six to eight weeks,” Nickel told Retail Brew.

An alternative scenario occurred to Nickel.

If “I could have told them, like, ‘Hey, J.Crew, I’m Dan. I’m coming into your Tribeca store Wednesday after work at 5:30. I’d like to try on these three pairs of jeans and these three jackets. Can you have them pulled aside? Can you have them waiting for me in a fitting room?’ That would have solved everything,” Nickel said.

Tote first piloted its solution in 2022 and released it officially in 2023, and today it’s live in 82 stores, according to Nickel.

 that integrates with the ubiquitous Shopify ecommerce platform. Online shoppers encounter the option on product pages, where near the add-to-cart button, there’s another button, “Try on in-store.” Then a Tote pop-up window prompts them to choose a store and time when the items will be waitng in a dressing room, and shoppers get an email confirmation, Google Calendar invite, and text reminder.

Nickel said the average return rate among shoppers who book an in-store try-on through Tote is under 2%, compared to the aforementioned average for online apparel purchases of 24.4%. Tote also claims that when customers show up for the appointment, they complete the purchase more than 95% of the time, and spend two to three times more on average than they do online.

As for how many shoppers keep their in-store appointment, Nickel said about 75% do, meaning one in four are no-shows.

Fitness brand Bandier began offering the Tote try-on option for all five of its stores in September, following a three-month pilot for three of them. According to Tote, 50% of Bandier shoppers are buying more than just the items that were set up for their appointments.

That’s because the sales staff start the upsell before their appointments arrive. Along with the item they want to try on, “we also try to do a slight alternative, so something similar, but maybe in a different color, or maybe in a slightly different silhouette,” Christine Gayant, VP of retail stores at Bandier, told Retail Brew. “And then we also try to do an element of surprise, so something that we feel like based on this initial selection they maybe could really like.”

If someone who makes an appointment to try something on at a Bandier store had not shopped the brand before, all the better, Gayant said.

Tote has helped the brand win over new customers because “they were really coming in with a purpose and with an idea, as opposed to just somebody walking in and just browsing,” Gayant said.

Sales staff at the stores don’t earn commission for online sales, so naturally appreciate that Tote drives customers into stores where they can.

The in-store staff “were like, ‘Oh my gosh, we’re gonna have more appointments with more clients. This is fantastic,’” Gayant said of their initial response, which remains upbeat. “The store teams absolutely love it.”

Woman checking herself in mirror while trying on new jeans.

How Tote helps redirect online shoppers to stores’ fitting rooms

Retail brands using the technology report lower returns and heftier orders.

Locked-display cases, the theft-prevention measure that puts so much of retailers’ inventory behind glass that stores are beginning to resemble claw machine arcades, are not exactly crowd pleasers.

 something that they want to purchase is locked, fewer than one in three shoppers (32%) summon an employee to unlock the case, according to a reader survey from Consumer World, a consumer advocacy website. More than half (55%) decide that instead of seeking a similar unlocked product, they’ll try to find it in another store.

But CVS is testing something that could make the locked cases less onerous, a system that enables shoppers to unlock the cases with their phones rather than having to wait for store employees.

 in September, Zachary Dennett, VP of merchandising at CVS, shared a short video revealing what he called a “big milestone for convenience at CVS,” namely that “customers can now unlock products with the app!”

The video showed a locked CVS case filled with vitamins, and an iPhone with the CVS app open being used to unlock it.

Intrigued by the post, which at the time of publication had been reposted 60 times, liked 1,628 times, and drawn 158 comments, I messaged Dennett on LinkedIn and requested an interview. Dennett never responded, but a day later Amy Thibault, lead director of external communications at CVS, emailed that my inquiry had been forwarded to her and that it was “a very small pilot” about which the company was “not ready to share any information.”

Asked over email how many stores were involved in the pilot, their locations, whether a vendor was supplying this technology or the retailer had developed it internally, and why if this was under wraps a CVS executive was posting about it to LinkedIn, Thibault declined to respond to the questions but offered a statement.

“We’re always looking at ways to improve the customer experience,” Thibault wrote. “This pilot is an example of how we’re applying technology as a possible solution and we’re eager to learn more about how it works and is received.”

Upon closer examination, in the short demo that Dennett posted to LinkedIn, when the CVS app was opened it showed the store’s street address. It was in Manhattan.

The CVS store was on the same toney block on the Upper West Side as The Belnord, the building featured in 

Inside, I made my way for the laundry detergent aisle, seeking Tide, an 

Signs said the cases could be unlocked with CVS app if Bluetooth and location services were turned on. As instructed, I went to the app’s menu, clicked “Unlock Products,” and held my phone to a sensor pad.

An alert sounded from the sensor, and the app confirmed that the case was unlocked. So I took the Tide and made my way to self-checkout.

I asked a couple employees about the system—just as a curious shopper, not identifying myself as a reporter—and they were both fans and said shoppers liked it, too. I asked one whether the app would now track whether I ended up purchasing the detergent and would nab me if I didn’t, but she laughed and said that was not how they were using the system.

It was a distinct improvement over my previous locked-case experiences, which often involved pushing the button for assistance, waiting, reviewing my career goals, then flagging down store associates, who often weren’t personally equipped to help but summoned someone who could.

The real beneficiaries of easier-to-unlock cases, however, may not be shoppers, but retailers.

Indyme, which developed a locked-display case that consumers can unlock with an app, loyalty card, entering a phone number, or facial recognition, does not confirm or deny whether it’s working with CVS or any retailers it partners with, citing confidentiality agreements, Hedgie Bartol, its VP of business development, told Retail Brew.

But the company’s CEO, Joe Budano, told Business Insider that, when retailers put their inventory in typical wait-for-an-associate locked cases, they typically lose 15%–25% of their sales.

A sign in a CVS describes how to unlock the locked display case using the CVS app. 

CVS’s pilot program lets shoppers unlock locked display cases

The chain declined to name the pilot stores. We found one.

We checked out CVS’s pilot program that lets shoppers unlock display cases with their phones

Phil Wahba

Fortune

A tote bag from McNally Jackson, a beloved local bookstore chain, hangs on a chair in Barnes & Noble CEO James Daunt’s New York City office. When pointed out to Daunt, he doesn’t get defensive that there’s evidence he’s buying books from a rival—quite the opposite. Daunt confesses he enjoys shopping there, and that, indeed, small booksellers have much to teach Barnes & Noble about enticing readers as the big-box chain pursues a turnaround.

Daunt himself owns a namesake chain of nine local bookstores in Britain. Before taking the reins at Barnes & Noble in 2019, after its purchase by activist investor Elliott Management, he had pulled off a dramatic turnaround at Waterstones, a prominent British bookstore chain teetering on the brink of obsoletion.

Daunt’s approach to fixing Barnes & Noble rests on running the 614-store chain more like a series of regional bookstores than a single national behemoth with centralized decision-making, with each store responsive to what local readers want. Store managers have the discretion to determine what titles to carry, how to present them in stores, and how to motivate staff.

Today, the company is the last large bookstore chain standing in the U.S., years after Borders and Waldenbooks folded. But when Daunt, 60, took over the company, he found a downward-spiraling Barnes & Noble and dumpy stores thanks to poor upkeep and years of 

too much wasted capital on tech products that didn’t bear fruit

 dominated the digital marketplace, many booksellers—the very reason to go to Barnes & Noble over Amazon—lost their jobs or saw their hours cut, depriving customers of the interactions that make a bookstore appealing.

The problem with Barnes & Noble’s previous turnaround attempts, Daunt says, is that leaders were rooted in basic big-box retail tenets, which tend to prioritize homogeneity across chains and cost-cutting, rather than focusing on bookselling.

While Barnes & Noble is privately held and, as such, does not disclose financial results, the retailer appears to be playing offense again. The bookseller, which closed hundreds of stores in the 2010s, plans on opening 50 stores this year, albeit many of them much smaller than traditional Barnes & Noble locations. Under Daunt, Barnes & Noble has also remodeled many stores—installing modular shelving, improving lighting, and reorganizing how books are presented.

This article has been edited and condensed for clarity.

: From a 30,000-foot view, why do you think the once moribund Barnes & Noble is turning itself around?

The focus got back to the people who sell books. Barnes & Noble had brought in a lot of professional retailers, but professional retailers don’t make very good booksellers. If you apply many of those retail principles to selling books, things tend to go wrong. In many areas of retail, they just kill customer service. We now have people focused on servicing the stores and are empowering employees themselves to do what they regard as best. That combination is powerful, and it moves things, but it does so slowly.

By decentralizing store operations, don’t you risk losing some of the benefits of Barnes & Noble’s scale?

A business needs to allow very different stores to evolve in different places. And we are now opening new stores of increasingly varied sizes. You can’t run the Upper East Side 6,000-square-foot store the same way you do a 24,000-square-foot store in New Jersey. The principles that underpin running them are still the same: Books are attractively and intelligently presented in what is predominantly a bookstore; getting the right books for your customers; and making sure customers are your focus. That means giving your booksellers freedom that allows them frankly to have more fun.

How have you made their jobs more enjoyable and, by extension, more effective?

You have to dismantle what has traditionally been an extremely hierarchical structure to equip each store to run better. There were few career opportunities because of the hierarchy, so if you had ambitions, you’d look elsewhere. We’ve also put our stores in clusters of four or five, and within those, we’ve tried to develop talent for that entire cluster, not just a single store. For example, we might hire someone with a knack for visual merchandising or putting on events who can help multiple stores.

We have to make shopping as easy as possible and train our booksellers to be as friendly as possible. We train people to just say yes to customer requests, which is not very complicated. Most of the time, the answer is yes unless a customer is trying to steal from me. That empowerment is still the thing we’re trying to push through because managers say no. Just do it.

Many predicted that e-books would continue outpacing physical books and become the dominant format. Why hasn’t that happened?

I was obviously a bookseller who had just taken over when Waterstones was in big trouble, and the explosion of the [Amazon] Kindle happened. But what I believed then and still think is self-evidently true is that a physical book is a lovely thing and a particularly pleasurable way to read. But e-reading and audiobooks are also right in different circumstances. It’s not a zero-sum game. Same for bookstores. If I open up a bookstore and McNally opens a bookstore, we’re not going to simply share a fixed pot between us. The more bookstores there are, the more people will be in them and buying books.

As an indie bookstore operator, I get that you have a much smaller physical space, and they tend to be more intellectually elevated. But Barnes & Noble has books for everyone. I think we can coexist. Just as I had no problem with Kindle coming out, I don’t have a problem with independent booksellers doing well. They do something very different and very valuable in society.

 Barnes & Noble’s e-commerce is underperforming at 9% of your sales. What are you doing to fix this?

The company never invested in e-commerce, so we’re sitting on a platform from years ago that has to be replaced. We will get there slowly, but there is a method to the logic and the pace. We first need to overhaul our membership program. If you have a good website tied to a very active and properly cared-for membership program, you can be extremely successful.

A few years ago, there were fads like adult comic books or Adele’s vinyl records to give Barnes & Noble an unexpected sales lift. What is doing that now for the company, and what categories have surprising resilience?

. It’s not just vinyl; it’s CDs and DVDs, too, that are selling. For CDs, I have to say, I was proved wrong. Some of our guys were saying, “We’ve got to keep the CDs.” (They did.) We are also the last retailer standing that has a really thorough and good magazine proposition. Same for toys and educational products. We are a major 

 retailer. Pokémon. We have enthusiasts in all these categories, and it all fits well together. 

There’s concern over book banning in some states. Where does Barnes & Noble land in this debate?

We strongly believe that books should be available to all, but we try to remove anything objectionable, such as racist content. I think our booksellers understand where our customers are inclined to object, but they also know that storms are whipped up on social media all the time.

Barnes & Noble CEO says retailer is expanding again thanks to Taylor Swift, Legos, and a return to bookselling roots

Omnichannel shopping is retail’s answer to polyamory, with consumers having fidelity to neither online nor in-store shopping, but rather genuine feelings for both. And to have a fulfilling relationship with these 

, retailers want to know when they go out, when they stay home, and how best to communicate with them.

Now 84.51°, a Kroger company that gathers data on omnichannel shoppers, whom it defines as those who’ve shopped both online and in-store at Kroger in the past 52 weeks, has some insights on what they like…and their dealbreakers.

Perhaps the most striking finding from 84.51°’s latest report, based on data gathered in February, is just how equally divided these omni-shoppers (as the company dubs them) are:

Among omni-shoppers, 40% do most of their shopping in-store, 40% do most online, and 20% shop in-store and online equally.

One way that omnichannel shoppers’ behavior can be revealing: It helps illuminate the advantages and disadvantages of both modes of shopping. For instance, when asked why they sometimes choose to shop online:

58% said it’s less stressful to shop online than in-store, up from 39% in 2023.

53% said it’s the ability to stay away from crowds, about the same (51%) as last year.

As for why they sometimes choose to shop in-store, on the other hand:

56% said they preferred to pick their own grocery and household items, compared to 46% in 2023.

51% said they don’t want to pay extra fees for delivery or pickup, up from 33% last year.

There also are categories of products that omnichannel shoppers prefer to buy online versus in-store.

For instance, hand-picking toilet paper or paper towels in Aisle 5 is not a priority: 76% of omni-shoppers said they prefer to order paper products online for either pickup or delivery. Ditto for shelf-stable groceries (75%) and household cleaning products (72%).

But they’d like to pick their cupcakes and avocados, thank you very much—77% prefer to purchase fresh bakery products in-store, along with produce (75%) and items from the deli, meat, or fish counter (74%).

What does 84.51° refer to? The degrees of separation between you and smoked bacon? The ideal temperature for a beach day? Nope. It’s the 

How omnichannel shoppers divide their allegiances

A study from Kroger’s 84.51° finds “omni-shoppers” spend more time in stores than you might think.

How omnichannel shoppers divide their allegiances between e-commerce and brick-and-mortar stores

 in advance of Black Friday to be the first in the door 

, largely because retailers start the sales earlier and shopping online has gotten more popular. Now outdoors retailer Eastern Mountain Sports is starting a new tradition of pitching a tent in parking lots, but it’s camping for the sake of camping, and it happens at the end of Black Friday, not a day (

On what EMS is calling its first annual Black Friday Parking Lot Campout, more than 200 campers at stores in Princeton, New Jersey, and West Lebanon, New Hampshire, arrived at about 6pm. The first 20 groups to arrive (and stay the full night) got to keep a camping package valued at more than $1,200, including a four-person tent and four sleeping bags, sleeping pads, and camp chairs, all of which had already been set up by EMS.

Most tents were set up in grassy areas on the periphery of the parking lot, while on the pavement there were food trucks, a climbing wall, movies, porta potties and—the cornerstone of any camping experience—deejays.

Along with being a [dislodges hook, line, and sinker from esophagus] ploy for media attention, the event is part of a broader marketing effort by EMS to position itself as an antidote to what it calls the “elitism” of other outdoors retailers.

Some of those function as “gatekeepers,” but “we want you to be outside anyway, anywhere, anytime, and we are going to give you quality gear, but at accessible prices,” Kerry Muricchio, EVP and general merchandise manager at EMS, told Retail Brew.

“You don’t have to be a millionaire to go camping; you don’t have to sleep in a national park…And this campout was just one part of the campaign to say, ‘Hey, come sleep in a parking lot.’”

 EMS has been outfitting hikers since 1967, but in recent years it hasn’t exactly been happy trails for the brand. In the last decade, its ownership has 

 times, with one owner filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and its footprint, once more than 60 stores, is now 25.

But GoDigital, which purchased the company in 2022, is intent on getting the brand back on the path.

In the last year, it has opened three new stores, with plans to open two more in December and three more in Q1 2024, and intends to grow its footprint by 20% in the next year.

“They’re all opening in markets right now that we’ve been before, so we’re coming back where our customer has been asking for us again,” Muricchio said.

While companies generally are loath to draw attention to their past financial difficulties, a television campaign introduced in October, by SlapGlobal, takes a tongue-in-cheek approach to inform viewers that EMS is opening stores in markets where it had previously shuttered them.

“A little while ago all of us here at Eastern Mountain Sports took a long hike on the Appalachian Trail,” explains an EMS store associate in the spot. “It was a lot of fun, but I guess we lost track of time and we were gone longer than expected, because when we got back someone had closed a bunch of our stores. Sorry about that—but we’re back, we’re refreshed, so come on in we’ll be here—this time.”

“Even though we’re poking fun at ourselves...we’re taking it to heart and we’re making it better, and we’re elevating and we’re growing,” Muricchio said.

A group of children and adults gathers around a fire in a barrel in an Eastern Mountain Sports parking lot. 

Why EMS hosted overnight campers in its parking lots

Emerging from ownership changes and store closures, the brand is growing again with an anti-elitist campaign.

Why Eastern Mountain Sports just hosted hundreds of overnight campers in its parking lots

Blasphemous as it may be to mention around here, not everyone loves holiday shopping, but here’s hoping it doesn’t get so bad that anyone is tempted to start drinking jet fuel. Unless, of course, they’re at Seattle’s Museum of Flight, where “jet fuel” is the 

, and was served gratis in its store as part of its Museum Store Sunday festivities on November 26.

Along with coffee, the museum store offered members 20% off purchases, and, for non-members, 20% off memberships.

 by the Museum Store Association, a nonprofit that supports retail stores at nonprofit cultural institutions. This year, more than 2,100 museum stores participated (from all 50 states in the US and 25 countries), up from 670 that first year.

This year’s results aren’t tallied yet, but 2022 was a banner year for Museum Store Sunday:

 to consumers, with a 2022 Harris Poll survey finding that 82% of consumers want a brand’s values to 

. And with nonprofit museums, naturally, many consumers believe most are valuable cultural institutions that enrich their communities.

“Everything that is sold in our museum stores goes back to the museum,” Susan Tudor, president of the Museum Store Association, told Retail Brew. “The net profits are all in support of what is done in the institution.”

Tudor also serves as store buyer and manager of visitor service at The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens in Jacksonville, Florida.

On this year’s Museum Store Sunday the Cummer offered 25% off the entire store, for both museum members and non-members, while members always get 10% off at the store and deeper discounts at other holiday events.

Tudor said that most museum participants offered one-day discounts from 10% to 30%.

Irrespective of whether museums are members of the Museum Store Association, the group encourages participation and offers a free marketing tool kit that includes free signage to print out and suggested marketing and social media content.

The group also encouraged participating museums to partner with vendors who might want to do trunk shows, adding a draw while not requiring the store to take on more inventory, and to work with other institutions in their area to purchase cooperative advertising with them.

This year the group emphasized that, since many museum stores feature the work of local artists, the stores can offer a more sustainable option than something manufactured offshore.

“Partnering with local artists reduces shipping-related costs and emissions for both museum stores and their patrons, ultimately minimizing air pollution while conserving valuable energy,” Patricia Sampson, board president of the Museum Store Association and director of the King Center Bookstore and Resource Center in Atlanta, said in a statement.

Daniel Thiem oversees New York’s New Museum of Contemporary Art’s retail store as its director of visitor experience, and this marked the first year the New Museum participated in Museum Store Sunday. The New Museum offered 20% off all orders in the store and online.

When Retail Brew visited the museum a week before the event, Thiem told us how museum stores have evolved over the decades.

In the 1980s and 1990s, museum stores sold more “tchotchkes,” like keychains, magnets, and pens, which Thiem doesn’t stock because he doesn’t want “to create more waste, quite frankly,” he said. Rather, the museum focuses more on functional everyday objects, like 

 that features the work of artist Judy Chicago or a 

 featuring the work of artist Pipilotti Rist.

And whether shoppers come to the shop on Museum Store Sunday or in the dog days of August, Thiem said he sees the store as being a “marketing arm” for the museum along with a revenue source.

“We’re able to be in some ways a voice and be an avenue for the museum to talk about its exhibitions in a bit indirect way through retail,” Thiem said. “Sometimes people just come to the museum store to come to the museum store, not necessarily to see a show, so this allows them to get a taste of what the museum is about.”

A woman browses colorful scarves in a museum store. 

How Museum Store Sunday became a global event

A record 2,100 museums participated this year.

In an unusual move in the e-commerce era, HomeGoods recently 

 to focus exclusively on its brick-and-mortar stores. The off-price furniture and home retailer had only 

 two years ago, but the strategy is not unprecedented among off-price stores, as competitors Ross and Burlington Stores also lack e-commerce sites.

 In an omnichannel era, is it a sound retail strategy for some retail chains to have no online store? 

, we asked how aggressively you thought that Yelp should police against businesses providing compensation for reviews, specifically whether businesses should be prohibited from providing compensation for any reviews, or just reviews that they insist are five stars.

About two-thirds (66%) of you think compensation should be banned outright, while almost one-third (32%) thought businesses should be prohibited from providing compensation only when the businesses insist the reviews are five stars, but not when reviewers are free to give as many stars as they wish. Just 2% of you thought businesses should be free to provide compensation for any reviews at all.

A grocery cart attached to a computer mouse. 