Brian Cluster

Lessons learned and digital wins provide confidence for retail success this year

Over 20,000 leaders from retailers and brands convened this year for NRF’s Big Show. But for the first time in 110 years, it was completely virtual. Despite the challenges, NRF came through just as retail did in 2020 by innovating and pivoting to create an excellent experience. There were more than 130 sessions by 330 speakers from over 3,500 participating companies.

Creating value for CPG brands in 2021 starts with optimizing the value of data

The CPG space experiences significant change every year, but for manufacturers of consumer packaged goods, 2020 was one for the record books. At this time last year, industry experts already predicted big changes were coming. Then came the global pandemic, causing the market to shift at an even faster pace. For brands that had taken steps to anticipate and prep for evolving trends and opportunities, the journey was tough but navigable. For others, there were difficult, unexpected challenges.

As manufacturers look back at 2020, they will reflect on the challenges, pivots, wins and new learnings. While many companies accelerated well designed solutions and employed them with success, others created stopgaps that were put in place rapidly to expand into new channels, launch new products and gain digital shelf distribution in new retail customers.

Four proactive ways of enhancing product information management instead of returns management – or how to drop from 20% to 0.5% return rate

Returns have been a pervasive problem for online retailers since online shopping began, and it’s only going to become more challenging with the growth in online sales. Right now, we can foresee a perfect storm building with the approaching holiday season’s shopping spike amid the COVID-19 crisis and the encouragement to minimize in-person activities. As a result, January 2021 may be the largest month in absolute volume for returns ever seen by retailers, and January 2nd may be the height of that returns storm.

From department and specialty big-box stores to grocers and independent retailers, the industry has been impacted by many challenges this year, much of which have been driven by an increase in digital shopping, Covid-19 and consumers’ weakening pocketbooks. The upcoming holiday season – including Black Friday and Cyber Monday – provides an opportunity for retailers to regain lost ground and perhaps even move from red to black in terms of profitability. In fact, Deloitte predicts that holiday sales this season will grow by 1.5% in the U.S. compared to last year.

Author’s note: Click here to see my updated post for 2021 and beyond

Making the most of today’s environment requires brands to enhance their data management capabilities with new innovations.

For consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies, the only constant is change – especially as it applies to trends impacting the industry. While many of last year’s trends are just as relevant today, the difference is that consumer behavior and market changes are occurring at a much faster rate (approximately 2-3 months instead of 2-3 years). For the most part, CPG companies and their retail partners have made tremendous strides in addressing these trends. In fact, some of the best prepared companies have moved beyond surviving and are actually thriving during these challenging times.

Since the outbreak of Covid-19, we have seen a dramatic shift in consumer shopping. More customers are focused on safety and convenience while price sensitivity has taken a temporary back seat.

Just over a week ago the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) a worldwide pandemic, calling on countries around the world to take drastic steps to slow the rapid spread of the virus.

Even though CPG companies and other businesses are in the middle of the busiest time of the year, Thanksgiving and holidays provides us an opportunity to take a moment to be grateful for our companies, colleagues and wonderful customers. But what often gets ignored in this time of gratitude is the richness and value of the data that customers are sharing about the product and their purchase experiences.

Fourth quarter holiday shopping results have always dictated retail financial success. While the marketing channels, tactics and consumer preferences have changed over the years, the fact that many retailers reap as much as half their annual revenue between the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays has remained constant.