Industry Challenges
Our specialty retail consultants are prepared to help your company face some of today’s most pressing challenges.
eCommerce Competition
Competition with eCommerce giants creates heightened expectations around product availability, convenience, and everyday low prices.
Increasing Consumer Expectations
Shopper purchasing habits are evolving with consumer expectations for immediate satisfaction at an all time high.
Managing Product Assortment
Product differentiation and assortment is diluted across retail experiences because of low barriers to entry in the direct to consumer marketplace.
Consumer Experience
Retailers face challenges creating friction-less, engaging customer experiences across channels that are consistent with brand image and values.
Building the Consumer-Brand Relationship
Creating surprising, but natural interactions with consumers outside of the store is important in the consumer-brand relationship.
Mastering Influencer Marketing
Finding efficient means to master your brand’s network of influencers is critical for success in specialty retail.
Industry Trends
Retail trends like digital transformation, emerging business models, and increasing expectations for personalization makes sustained profitable growth challenging for specialty retailers.
Omnichannel
Omnichannel continues to be a focus for specialty retailers who need to ensure that they have the right product in the right place at the right time. Investments are being made in technology to enable flexible fulfillment options such as in-store or curbside pickup or same day delivery.
Personalization
Personalization from both a product and messaging perspective remains top of mind for retailers who seek to stay relevant with customers who now have more choices than ever.
Consumer Engagement
In-Store and online experiences are changing to optimize consumer engagement and brand relevancy. Retailers are designing compelling tactics to make store visits about more than just the purchase.
Organizational Health
Given the challenging environment, specialty retailers are seeking new ways to make staff efficient, productive, and inclusive.
Optimizing Retail Store Operations with Advanced Analytics to Increase Revenue
A leading global footwear and apparel company wanted to streamline the way they use reporting to manage and operate the business in order to take full advantage of the vast amounts of data from their stores and online channels. Clarkston partnered with the business to consolidate the client’s complex IT reporting and analytics technology landscape and build a strategy for analytics and reporting architecture and capabilities.
Identified staffing optimization $7.5M opportunity that could increase revenues up to $7.5M
Proposed A/B test to 5% increase conversion by 5%
Created 5 new KPIs to measure store performance through conversion
