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Browsing: Retail News
The U.S. convenience store industry boasts a total of 151,282 stores (as of December 31, 2013) across the country and posted $696 billion in total sales in 2013.
ShopKeep.com is tacking on an extra month onto their “Race to 1 Million” promotion, giving away an additional $500k worth of product to help businesses prepare for the holiday season.
To sum kiosk and cart success up in a word, it would be “focus.” While it seems like having easy access to foot traffic would be a huge advantage, running a successful kiosk is a discipline that begins long before the first product is offered for sale. Kiosk owners who are focused in their design, marketing, and product selection stand the best chance of success. Those who are relaxed, thinking that just being in a busy mall environment and offering a bunch of loosely connected “popular” products will guarantee sales, risk failure.
There is a lot of talk these days about switching to virtual, digital and mobile payments. We hear every day about how soon we’ll be paying for holiday shopping sprees with our phones instead of our wallets and plastic gift cards. However, you probably didn’t know that the vast majority of Americans still prefer physical gift cards to electronic ones.
According to retailers across the spectrum of industries and outlets, consumers are increasingly responsive to the “Made in USA” message. There are many possible explanations for this trend, including fallout from the recession, generational shifts and the changing global economy, which provide opportunities for retailers everywhere.
As a retailer, it is up to you to find the hottest new products, and provide those products to your customers before anyone else can. Today, there are approximately 150,000 convenience stores in operation. 63 percent of those convenience stores are independently owned, while the remaining are chain store operations.
As competition in retail intensifies, the future of the convenience store bottom line is coming into focus: food. Experts and industry advocates say that after decades of selling packaged foods, candy, and maybe the occasional roller hot dog or nacho tray, convenience stores are rapidly breaking new ground in the food service business. They are adding deli counters, salad bars, and even haute cuisine.
Annual sales for men’s grooming products reached $3 billion in 2012, and are projected to grow to $6.1 billion by 2017. For the first time in history, men spent more cash on male-specific toiletries in 2013 than on shaving products. Retailers big and small are taking notice, and are betting big that the trend will only continue to grow.
After years of relentless pressure, experts in the toy and gift market are finally beginning to see signs of a revitalized market for small to midsize retailers. However, they warn, it’s not a simple story. The market that’s emerging post-recession and post-Internet is a very different market than retailers have grown accustomed to. In fact, it may be more like the one their grandparents would recognize.