The website of economist and keynote speaker Linda Nazareth, expert in demographics, global trends and the future of work
Will cutting-edge layaway plans be the salvation of the retail sector and the broader economy, or are they a disaster waiting to happen? The newest experiments in making it consumer payments easy is creative, but may not bring the long-term results that retailers hope to see. Sure, they are being done through a cutting-edge Swedish […]
After this Globe and Mail column came out, I had a friend call and ask whether he should re-jig his portfolio to get rid of his auto stocks. The piece is about demographics, and specifically about the implications of the fact that people spend differently over their lifetimes (spoiler: as you age you are more […]
It’s a new year so how better to celebrate it than by throwing away all the junk you bought last year? And the one before that, and before that? Seems like so many of us have piles of unwanted ‘stuff’ and nothing feels better than throwing it away. No one gets that better than clutter-buster […]
Walmart buying Modcloth? ‘Say it’s not so’ went the lament from Millennials and other assorted cool people earlier this year. After all, Modcloth is a cutting-edge, online retailer that offers funky clothes for those who consider themselves the opposite of everything the world’s biggest retailer stands for. Modcloth and Walmart could never be a fit […]
Sure you can go for a run for free, but if you did you would be off trend. That is one take-away from some new statistics on where people are spending their fitness dollars. According to this article from Quartz (which quotes data from the International, Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association, U.S. attendance at specialty […]
Twenty and thirtysomethings would apparently rather buy experiences than things, and that has some very definite implications for retailers – or as least that is one theory. As this article from Bloomberg Business suggests, the stock market tells the tale of what is happening very clearly, and will continue to do so as the millennials […]
Former Abercrombie CEO Mike Jeffries (yes, I said ‘former’, he stepped down today) said some pretty dumb and offensive things about who he wanted his clientele to be. If the company’s numbers were good nobody might have cared, but in this retail environment he rightly got beat up for them. As far as selling the […]
