With digitally native darlings Warby Parker and Allbirds preparing to make their initial public offerings this week and later this fall, respectively, the companies’ regulatory filings point to the return of a recent trend in consumer retail: clicks to bricks. Clicks to bricks, or digitally native brands opening brick and mortar stores, was building momentum […]

The inescapable disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have caused many of us to focus on the near-daily ups and downs of the past year and a half.  But a recent announcement from a fast fashion retailer served as a reminder that certain trends were with us long before the pandemic and will last far […]

On March 1st, I wrote in this space about a scarcity of shipping equipment and containers available for ocean freight from China to the U.S. and Europe impacting the supply chain for consumer goods and the costs companies were paying to import products. At that time, indexes tracking such container rates had surpassed $5,000 from […]

In April 2020, Daphne Howland of Retail Dive wrote “Few retailers will come out of this unprecedented moment unscathed, but department stores are at a point of no return. None can go back to business as usual. Some may not come back at all.” What a difference a year makes. Now, in the face of […]

The rapid spread of the highly contagious COVID-19 Delta variant has grabbed national headlines and put a dent in people’s optimism that the pandemic will soon be over in the U.S. According to the New York Times, as of this morning, case counts in the U.S. are continuing to climb rapidly, with the seven-day rolling […]