Best Reading of the Day - Entry 0162 Department Store Reinvented

Excellent article if you have any interest in retail:

http://www.businessoffashion.com/2014/10/reinventing-department-store.html

Here is a snippet from the piece:

“At the beginning, department stores were monsters, anchoring the city centre, with an enormous collection of product coming from all over the world,” said retail veteran Vittorio Radice, the former head of London’s Selfridges and currently chief executive of La Rinascente, the Italian department store owned by Thailand’s Central Group. “They were the souk of the 19th century. You went to those stores not only to buy but basically to spend time, to browse. It was the flâneur going in and spending time admiring beautiful goods that they had heard about.”

But, today, department stores have lost some of their lustre, along with a significant share of total retail sales. The shift began in the 1960s and 1970s, as product categories that were better served by specialty chains and discounters — such as books, music, electronics and furniture — began a mass exodus from department stores and, later, became top sellers for e-commerce giants like Amazon.

Happy Reading,

J.W. Gant