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Retail Paradox Weekly
Retail News Analysis by RSR Research
September 12, 2007
The Retail Method of Accounting: Troublesome Anachronism?
By Paula Rosenblum, Managing Partner
9/11/2007
Last week, we talked about possible new metrics for measuring retailers, and concluded that for now, overall performance metrics should remain unchanged. This week well take a look at the core of many retailers financials: the Retail Method of Accounting.
Why talk about this today? The following news item was published by the Associated Press: The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said Wednesday that Saks Inc. has agreed to settle a lawsuit that Saks Fifth Avenue understated sales to some vendors and didn't record markdowns properly, inflating its earnings. More...
PCI and Customer Data Security: California Ups the Ante
By Brian Kilcourse, Managing Partner
9/11/2007
Last week, the Appropriations Committee of the California State legislature approved a new Customer Data protection Act (AB 779). The bill had already won overwhelming support of the State Assembly in June in the wake of the TJX breach, and now goes to the Senate and presumably on to the Governator for his signature. The bill significantly ups the ante for retailers operating in the state, by establishing tighter rules for the destruction of customer-specific data, greater requirements for notification of a breach, and new financial burdens for retailers in the form of reimbursement to financial institutions who are required to notify their customers of a breach. More...
What Does the iPhone Mean for Online Shopping?
By Nikki Baird, Managing Partner
9/11/2007
Just as retailers are starting to get their arms around what it means to operate both an online and a store channel, technology comes along and changes the game: smart phones. While smart phone penetration is still relatively small, there is no doubt that the mobile web adds yet another channel for the retailer to consider in the portfolio. While the mobile phone may never be as stand-alone as the other two channels mobiles biggest opportunity for retailers is to serve as the connecting point between the online world and the physical world it is as much a disruptor as online commerce was to traditional store retailing. More...
Behind Closed Doors: TJX Causes Better Conversations
By Steve Rowen, Partner
9/11/2007
The life of a retailer has never been an easy one. Granted, customers have always been demanding, and even in the earliest marketplaces, exercised their power of choice to sort through retailers which met their needs by the most favorable means.
Yet in todays growing paradox, retailers are asked to do more than ever before to distinguish themselves from competitors. Offering compelling value in a marketplace founded upon small sales margins? Tough. Doing it with a lagging IT infrastructure? Tougher still. But this growing, three-front storm is only perfected by the fact that retailers are now the target of a new kind of criminal the kind that security guards in the store or on the docks cant keep out. More...
About this Newsletter: Why Retail Paradox
By Brian, Nikki, Paula and Steve
Welcome to a brand new edition of Retail Paradox, where well explore the difficult choices faced by retailers and their partners in the 21st century. This weekly newsletter is brought to you by RSR Research, the only research firm run by retailers for the retail industry. We hope youll find our articles relevant, informative, edgy, and provocative. Our goal is simple, but ambitious: we want to identify and articulate processes and technologies retailers need to improve their business and give clear and concise examples of how retail winners do just that.
On the surface, this seems quite straightforwardand its easy to pontificate on what retailers should do. Experience shows us otherwise: retailers live in a world of paradox, and breaking this paradox has become the vision quest for retailers both extraordinarily large, and microscopically small. More....
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Copyright 2007 RSR Research LLC. RSR is a tradename of Retail Systems Research LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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