Retailers Picked A Really Bad Time To Be So Boring

Perhaps you’ve noticed that things are pretty tough across the retail industry these days? Competition has never been more fierce. Average unit retail prices are getting compressed, putting ever greater downward pressure on margins. Retailers and developers that overbuilt for years are at long last facing a reckoning. Radical transparency and ease of anytime, anywhere, anyway shopping are hammering those that have failed to innovate and differentiate. Of course, not so long ago retail brands could get away peddling average products for average people. There was a time when retailers and the brands they sold held most of the cards. There was a time when rapid industry growth could smooth over patches of mediocrity. There was a time when being just a little bit interesting could win the customer’s attention and give retailers a good shot at making the sale. That time is over. Forever. Now the customer is very much in charge. Now largely stagnant markets require brands to steal share to have any chance of material top line growth. Now much of retail is drowning in a sea of sameness. Now the consumer is overwhelmed by choices and the battle for share of attention is only won by the weird, the intensely relevant, the remarkable. Read more at Forbes.