Beauty’s Retail Reckoning: Specialty and Mass Retail Poised for Further Gains

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By Allison Collins on October 29, 2021  ||  WWD The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have specialty retailers including Sephora and Ulta Beauty poised to gain even more market share in the U.S., experts said. How many brick-and-mortar retail stores does the beauty industry actually need? That’s the question those in the industry are asking themselves in ... Read more

Gen Z Cares But Expects Retailers to Care More

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Members of Gen Z care about social issues, but they also demand that retailers and brands make sustainable, conscious consumerism easy to achieve. We pulled Gen Z responses from two How America Shops® 2021 reports and compiled the results, to reveal a telling pattern. Do You Really Know What Gen Z Cares About? WSL’s recent How America Shops® study, “The ... Read more

Powerful Partnerships: What Makes Retail Alliances Work

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More big retailers are exploring alliances, with the anticipation that doubling up will double the cachet, more than double the size of the shopper basket – and create a second reason to come into the store. WSL sent its Retail Safari® scouts out to see what works and does not toward this bigger-basket goal, and ... Read more

Are You Honest Enough for Shoppers? 5 Steps to Get There

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We asked shoppers to speak their truths about what they buy, how and why, and learned this: They expect the companies they purchase from to take responsibility for social change and to authentically PROVE it. In short, companies must “show” they are more sustainable, fair and community-focused – across all the media their customers use. Here ... Read more

Beauty Breaks Barriers in Health, Safety and Innovation

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Shoppers have been inspiring remarkable retail innovations across categories, but in few areas are the results as noteworthy as in beauty’s healthy, safety and digitally progressive experiences. WSL’s Virtual Retail Safari® Open Call Event, scheduled for March 11, captures the most visionary and shopper-inspired examples. Healthy Beauty is an Exercise in Getting it Right For years, ... Read more

Beauty Spending Will Look Different in 2021

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By Allison Collins on February 26, 2021  ||  WWD “They’re calling it the she-session. That’s going to affect beauty sales, that’s going to affect the quest for value."  New year, new beauty shopping habits? For several months, industry insiders have whispered predictions of a “trade down to mass,” insinuating that consumers who have been hurt by the economic fallout from ... Read more

Extraordinary Sustainability: 5 Retail Safari® Examples

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WSL’s research shows that shoppers have long felt sustainability is a cause worth spending more for. Now retailers are taking that value-driven purpose from ordinary to extraordinary, and driving even more shoppers toward sustainability. Here, we share five examples from our Retail Safari® tours. Shoppers Sought Sustainable Retail, Now It’s Seeking Them Sustainability is becoming ... Read more

Beauty Industry Execs Applaud Walgreens CEO Choice

Storefront of Walgreens
By Allison Collins and Jenny B. Fine on January 28, 2021  ||  WWD As consumers come into Walgreens' doors, there's opportunity to evolve the beauty department, sources said. Walgreens Boots Alliance is slated to play an integral part in the U.S. rollout of the coronavirus vaccine, and it’ll be doing so under a new chief executive officer — Rosalind “Roz” Brewer. With the appointment, ... Read more

WSL’s Virtual Retail Safari® Reveal Reimagined Stores

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The year 2020 not only redefined shopping, it helped re-engineer what stores look like now. WSL Retail Safari® scouts explored some of the most forward-looking changes in the physical store. Following are concepts worth watching, from our recent tours. What Kinds of Stores are Your Shoppers Returning To? The physical store was changing long before ... Read more

Will Shoppers Surge to Re-opened Retail? Probably Not

Will Shoppers Surge to Re-opened Retail? Probably Not blog banner featuring line of people in a store next to a line of carts
Sales signs may not be enough to bring shoppers into reopened stores. Two mighty forces are working against a resurgence of store traffic: One is the risk of contracting COVID-19, which will keep many shoppers away; the second will be how shoppers rethink spending after being unemployed or furloughed for months. Our Retail Safari® scouts ... Read more

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