Tag Archives: retail

The state of retail online shopping in UK: January 2011 report

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Shoppers in the United Kingdom spent 5.1 billion pounds ($8.3 billion) online in January, up 21% from one year prior, according to the latest figures from consultant Capgemini and Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG), a web retailing industry association.The travel sector generated some of the largest growth, as more shoppers took advantage of seasonal discounts on vacation packages. “Travel is one of the sectors of the U.K. economy that saw the earliest adoption of the Internet as an initial point of purchase and this trend shows no sign of abating,” says Phillip Rinn, director of advertising partnerships at eBay Advertising.

January travel sales were up 31% compared with the same month in 2009, and the average value of trips purchased was 886 British pounds ($1,439), the highest recorded in over two years. Many of those winter-weary travellers also bought luggage online, says Russ Carroll, U.K. managing director of comparing shopping site Shopping.com. “Shopping.com saw sales of luggage rise by over 20%,” Carroll says, “as many consumers decided they needed to get away from the miserable British weather.”

Hefty discounts offered by furniture chains also contributed to strong results for online home and garden retailers, as shoppers spent 56% more at these e-commerce sites in January than the year prior, according to IMRG results. “Home, on the back of our Clearance offer, had a very strong month with sales up over 30% on 2010,” says Jonathon Brown, head of online selling at general merchandise retailer John Lewis.

Alcohol sales dropped 67%, which IMRG attributed to shoppers’ desire to cut back after holiday excesses in December (Source: Stefany Moore for Internetretailer.com)

A CONSCIOUS COLLECTION – SUSTAINABLE STYLE AT H&M

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Sustainability is a long term trend at H&M and this April as part of the focus on sustainability H&M will introduce the Conscious Collection – The collection which is for women, men and children is made from enviromentally – adapted and greener materials such as organic cotton, Tencel® and recycled polyester. H&M’s designers have been inspired by different shades of white, one of the most important colours this Spring. A minimalist, tailored look is combined with romantic lace, Broderie Anglaise, frills and draping. The Conscious Collection will be on sale in all H&M stores from 14th April. “It’s not just about organic cotton any more, the possibilities for creating a complete fashion statement with eco smarter materials are huge now. By designing recurring Conscious Collections we have the opportunity to show in a variety of ways what’s possible using more sustainable fabrics,” says Ann-Sofie Johansson, H&M Head of design. “Shades of white are the season’s biggest fashion trend and it feels right for this collection. White creates a romantic feeling with lace and Broderie Anglaise, but is also the basic colour in a sporty, relaxed style and in a preppy tailored look for men.” Womenswear is inspired by an updated romantic style in which blouses, tunics and T-shirts with Broderie Anglaise are a key trend. Tiered dresses are perfect for day or more dramatic Grecian gowns for night. Long floaty skirts are key as are cut-off shorts. The collection also includes the perfect white blazer and pleated trousers for a more minimalist look as well as Broderie Anglaise and lace lingerie. Menswear takes on a preppy mood with a white two-button blazer, collarless shirts and T-shirts with Henley detailing at the neck. There are printed and striped T-shirts, as well as a tank top for layering and trousers are either five-pocket jeans or tailored. Meanwhile the Children’s collection is full of white pieces for both girls and boys. It’s all about tiered dresses, tops, skirts for girls, and for boys t-shirts and jeans. (Source: H&M press release, Photos: H&M)

Last Inditex step towards sustainability

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We are following what Inditex – whose brands are Zara and PullandBear among the many – is doing about sustainability, and we always really like it! The last news is about their Tempe subsidiary (footwear), locate in Elche (ES), where they have installed a vertical garden, a growing trend in the cutting edge cities and capitals worldwide.

The project was designed by Urbanarbolismo, which made an impressive installation of 16 meters in height, with a total area of 80 m2 and an irrigation system controlled by computer. The vertical garden can be seen from all the company's plants, offices, meeting rooms, etc., making the whole building filled with an amazing natural light. (Source: www.jardiland.es)

Green packaging: here’s some news

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In our ECOFFEE experience, Green Packaging and waste management are two of the most difficult to handle issues for a retailer who wants to approach a greener and more sustainable business. Just a couple of years ago, it was very difficult to find packaging that could be both resistant, green and easy to recycle or compost. Now life has been made easier by smart companies which are offering to retailers plenty of products to satisfy the most demanding client: from corn cups to sugar-beet takeout containers, degradable packaging is forecast to expand an impressive 13.6 percent annually to $685 million in 2014.

Now let's talk about two very different kind of packaging, coffee cups and pizza cardboard. Coffee cups are not that common in Italy, where coffee is still serverd in the traditional ceramic "tazzina", but everywhere else in the world, it is a must for those who want to sip the hot drink while driving to office. The Repurpose One Cup  is a new insulated hot cup that is 100 percent certified compostable. The design requires no sleeve, uses 65 percent less CO2 than a disposable coffee cup to produce, and can be composted in 90 days in an industrial facility. If the cups are thrown away with regular trash, they will degrade in the landfill just like food waste. Traditional insulated cups are made by adding additional layers of paper; however, the One Cup keeps coffee (and other beverages) hot by applying patented insulation material to a single wall cup made of FSC-Certified paper.

Talking about pizza, here's the "Salvapizza", a prototype developed in Italy by a pool of experts. Salvapizza is made of white cardboard printed with food ink and this prototype allows consumers to heat the pizza in the microwave. Thanks to the side slots, the pizza "breathes", ensuring the right kind of ventilation during the heating process, hence preserving the pizza fragrance. In the prototyping of Salvapizza, special attention was paid to the possibility of recycling the used container. The cardboard can be in fact easily divided in two parts: the upper part can be detached and easily recycled in the paper waste container. A simple idea, but that can help recycling a lot of waste material, thinking that each year, the Italian production of cardboards for pizza sums up to almost 620 million units. (Source: Crispgreen and Marrai A Fura)

Green Marketing 3.0 not that successful case history: Pepsi Raw

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In a previous post we talked about Green Marketing 3.0. Here is a very intersting story about a not that successful case.

In 2007, Pepsi launched a great cola called Pepsi Raw in the UK: a fantastic packaging and a great taste,containing no artificial preservatives, colours, flavourings or sweeteners. By replacing corn syrup with cane sugar, Pepsi managed to reduce the calorie content of a 300ml bottle from around 120 calories to around 90 calories. It all came with a great on-line and off-line marketing campaign and in 2009 Pepsi Raw included a Twitter tag on cans and asked consumers to log-on to the microblogging website to share their thoughts on the soda in 140 characters or less. The last Twitter feed dates January 2010 and at that date Pepsi Raw had only 1293 followers. It was not a great success, especially the rollout to grocery, and the product had to be withdrawn from the UK market.

Sad story, but this teaches that marketing to the retail sector can be tricky for big corporations too- we only hope that Pepsi will not give up in their attempt to offer to consumers a healthier and greener cola.

Green Marketing 3.0: what is it about?

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Marketing, as you all know, is what enables product to be seen and purchased by consumers. For those who are in the retail business, marketing is a science to master in order to reach success and profit – I add: for more than a year!

Something I always read to those retailers that are entering the world of “green”, is a very interesting article about Green Marketing written by Jeff Dubin a couple of months ago. For those who are interested in reading the full version, you can find it at Jacquie Ottman’s Greenmarketing.com blog. Here a few key sentences by Jacquie: “To really succeed on a wide scale in America, green products either need to establish their superiority on conventional, non-green product features such as effectiveness or price, or make green more relevant to people’s everyday lives….

If green marketers can build the case for how their products are healthier for baby and Mommy and Daddy and Grandma and.., then the greenness of a product becomes a primary benefit rather than a secondary one and the higher hanging fruit now becomes more attainable. That’s Green Marketing 3.0.”

I do agree with that, and you?

Here's a new breed of consumers: the CITYSUMERS

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Retailers be aware of this growing segment of consumers which will become each and every day more and more important: the CITYSUMERS. According to Trendwatching.com, Citysumers are "The hundreds of millions (and growing!) of experienced and sophisticated urbanites*, from San Francisco to Shanghai to São Paulo, who are ever more demanding and more open-minded, but also more proud, more connected, more spontaneous and more try-out-prone, eagerly snapping up a whole host of new urban goods, services, experiences, campaigns and conversations".

The Trendwatching February brief describes this trend with all its social and cultural implications, together with an interesting showcase of companies whose products have been designed specifically to satisfy CITISUMERS' tastes and needs. Very interesting. (Photo courtesy of Workerman)

7-Eleven embraces sustainability

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As we at ECOFFEE are always saying, sustainability in the retail business is not a trend but it is a must if you want to be sucessful in the future. And when we read that giants such as Wal-Mart, Whole Foods Market, Castorama and Tesco, are actually changing their policies and store design to follow a more sustainable business we wonder when this will happen in Italy.

Today, our attention was caught by a very interesting article on the NYTimes about 7-Eleven convenience stores in Japan where fluorescent light bulbs have been replaced by the soft glow of light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, that consume half the energy and last much longer.

The 7-Eleven Japan program also includes photovoltaic panels on the store roof, and light-reflecting floor and sensors that automatically adjust the lighting.

The article also points out that this is going to be a very expensive program, being a green 7-Eleven store as much as 30 percent more expensive to build than a more traditional one. But Japanese customers are now more eco-conscious and shopping in a greener store can be more appealing to them. (Photo courtesy of Voice)

The retail business in year 2015? Just ask Nielsen!

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Every now and then, I go back to the old the reports published by company leader in the market analysis and forecast, to see whether they did a good job – and it was worth buying thCPG Nielsen Reporte report – or it was just a "storytelling" exercise. When I read the Nielsen's report about the state of CPG (consumer packaged goods) industry in 2015 I just said: "Ok, I think there's something missing.." They wrote about mass supercenters and e-commerce experiencing the most dollar share gains through 2015. Drugstores, mass merchandisers and convenience stores will witness an increase in dollar sales, but will also experience share losses. Consumers will do their shopping via smartphones and digital and social marketing will be leading a company success and so on. But one thing was really missing, and this was sustainability. Wal-Mart is one of the leader in the retail business and they are taking big steps towards sustainability, do Nielsen think that they are wrong and by 2015 this issue will not be of much importance? Comments are welcomed! (Photo source: Flickr, Mazda6 (Tor)

Chinese consumers are going green: this is going to be a great revolution

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As stated in this interesting article posted on U.S.A Today, Chinese farmers are now more sensitive to sustainibility issues, especially after fake or toxic batches of food supplies have worried Chinese consumers in recent months. It seems that even Chinese government is getting involved in fighting against food poisoning, improving supervision and making penalties thougher. Quoting the article, "Almost 70% of China's consumers feel insecure about food safety, according to a survey released recently by Insight China Magazine and the Tsinghua University Media Survey Lab."

Counting a population of more than 1.3 billion inhabitants, China is undoubtedly going to become the biggest market in the world for organic food. Food Retailers, get ready for that! (Picture courtesy of Calum McLeod, USA TODAY)