Retail Consulting Archives - The Grayson Company

The Grayson Company Turns 30

Celebrating our 30th year as a retail strategy consulting firm, I want to take a moment to express my sincere appreciation for your support. Over the past three decades, we have focused on bringing our clients fact-based, data-driven, actionable solutions and perspectives that are practical, objective, and global. At TGC, we provide our clients the most experienced industry experts to tackle the most difficult challenges faced by omnichannel retailers, digital natives, vertical brands, and investors around the world. Despite the ups and downs of the industry, we have been able to grow and expand our business, a testament to our business model and our incredible team. With offices in New York and Los Angeles, our reach extends to twenty-six countries across the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Our talented team is distinguished by their deep, hands-on experience and their ability to adapt to the industry's rapidly changing landscape. David Ball, our President, and [...]

TGC2023-04-05T18:51:05-04:00

Farm Rio’s US Retail Strategy

TGC recently sat down with Daniel Martinez, Farm Rio’s Global Retail Director to discuss his new role, the current state of the business and the US retail strategy that TGC developed with the Farm Rio team. Farm Rio, a vertically integrated Brazilian apparel company that designs, produces, and markets colorful print garments inspired by its local cultural and environmental roots, was founded in 1997 by Marcello Bastos and Katia Barros. In 2010, it became part of the newly created Grupo Soma, a multi-brand company which has grown to be one of the largest apparel groups in Brazil. The brand began planning for its US debut in 2018 and a year later opened a store in the SoHo section of New York and then one north of Miami in Aventura Mall, along with a few experimental pop-up stores in select markets. Within a year of opening stores, COVID hit. Against all odds, Farm [...]

TGC2022-11-03T07:21:11-04:00

Honesty Is The Best Policy

TGC’s President David Ball speaks with Time Magazine. Dave Horesh always liked the nice round prices on his company’s website: $25, $50, $100 for custom-made fabric banners and pennants in a rainbow array of felts. But by October, vendors for materials like thread, felt, ink and brass grommets had raised prices multiple times in the course of the year, turning a “slow drip” of increased costs into a troubling conundrum. So co-founder Horesh and the rest of his team at Oxford Pennant finally agreed: those nice round numbers were going to have to change. “When you get the right margins, you can absorb a 5% increase here, if the cost of thread goes up by 4%, whatever,” he says from his converted-attic office at his home a mile-and-a-half from his company’s factory in Buffalo, New York. “But when it happens across your entire supply chain, you can only resist it so long.” For small business owners like Horesh, [...]

TGC2021-12-29T09:13:43-05:00

Apparel Retailers Tread Carefully In Fragile Recovery

Apparel retailers are scrambling to capture returning sales unleashed by pent-up demand, even as they brace for challenges ahead. The past 12 to 18 months have been tough for clothing and accessories sales. For apparel to be meaningful and necessary, people have to be going places, and that certainly wasn’t the case during much of the pandemic. Instead of dressing to go to the office, school or dinner, a majority of the population opted for stretchy waistbands, casual comfort and sports apparel. “In going through the pandemic, people recalibrated what was important, and apparel fell way off the map," noted Kevin Mullaney, CEO of The Grayson Co., a retail consulting firm. . The outlook for apparel sales brightened in the first quarter as vaccinations rolled out, businesses began reopening and consumers got out of their homes and started spending. According to a July report from the U.S. Census Bureau, seasonally adjusted sales at [...]

TGC2021-09-21T11:30:50-04:00

Ten brands founded 10 years ago and how they’ve succeeded

David Ball speaks with the NRF about the success of 10 brands founded 10 years ago. Tin and aluminum are traditional gifts for couples celebrating their 10th wedding anniversary. While perhaps not as glamourous as crystal (reserved for 15 years) or bronze (eight years), these materials embody pliability and strength. Retailers who make it to their 10 -year anniversary also have had to draw on these qualities. Many of the brands that launched in 2011 and continue to thrive reinvented prevailing business models. Most embraced the growing range of commerce: ecommerce, mobile commerce, re-commerce and social commerce, often along with bricks-and-mortar stores. While their products and customer bases differ, a few themes are common. They’re digital and direct-to-consumer By going directly to consumers, these brands can bypass many middlemen, says David Ball, president of consulting firm The Grayson Company. As digitally native vertical brands, the companies typically address at least one of [...]

TGC2021-09-08T11:01:46-04:00

The Five Best Omni-Channel Retailers

National Real Estate Investor January 4, 2018 By Donna Mitchell As the retail industry heads into 2018, retail experts say companies like the ones listed here will find a way to master online retailing. Online retailing is often cast as an outlier threatening to decimate the traditional brick-and-mortar retail business. While industry experts no longer fear such a drastic outcome, omni-channel retailers have been making moves recently that are difficult to ignore. The U.S. Department of Commerce holds that e-commerce accounts for 9 percent of all retail purchases, according to the agency’s third quarter 2017 data. That number is expected to grow. Online sales will reach about $100 billion in 2017, predicted Ben Conwell, a senior managing director at real estate services firm Cushman and Wakefield and its e-commerce advisory group lead, during a recent webcast about 2017 holiday sales expectations. Yet retail real estate experts do not foresee an apocalypse, and [...]

TGC2018-03-26T08:55:12-04:00

TGC CEO Kevin Mullaney joins Trever Gallina on his new podcast ‘People in Retail’

TGC CEO Kevin Mullaney sits down with Trever Gallina to discuss the state of retail, Target’s pregnancy predictability factor, and some surprising statistics that debunk brick and mortar / ecommerce. Don’t miss this podcast! Highlights frrom the podcast: 1:00 Into to Kevin Mullaney and The Grayson Company 2:25 Kevin discusses Brick & Mortar's impact on Ecommerce 4:56 What is the right balance between Ecommerce and Brick & Mortar? 7:45 What’s hot in NYC? 12:00 How a brand should approach expanding in NYC 15:06 Target’s pregnancy predictability factor

TGC2018-03-26T08:55:13-04:00

TGC’s Chris Palma hosts keynote conversation at the 2017 NYU Stern Luxury & Retail Conference

Chris Palma, a Senior Analyst at TGC, recently hosted a keynote conversation at the 11th Annual NYU Stern Luxury & Retail Conference. The event featured Elaine Hughes, CEO of E.A. Hughes, and Ron Frasch, former President and CMO of Saks Fifth Avenue and Operating Partner at Castanea Partners. Prior to joining Castanea, Ron was President and Chief Merchandising Officer at Saks Fifth Avenue until the sale of the company to Hudson's Bay Co. in 2013. Previously, Ron was CEO and President at Bergdorf Goodman. He also held senior executive positions at Escada and Neiman Marcus. For the past 10 years, the Luxury & Retail Club at New York University's Leonard Stern School of Business has hosted an annual conference bringing together top graduate students with leading industry professionals in Luxury, Retail, Hospitality & Spirits, and Consulting. This year’s conference theme was ‘Envisioning a Connected Future’. With the retail space constantly evolving—the goal [...]

TGC2018-03-26T08:55:13-04:00

TGC’s Kevin Mullaney and Chris Palma discuss retail real estate trends at The Harvard Club NYC

The Grayson Company’s Kevin Mullaney and Chris Palma were recently invited by The Real Estate Special Interest Group of The Harvard Club NYC to lead a panel on current trends in the retail industry, with an emphasis on how these trends are impacting real estate property values. TGC discussed the rapid pace of change in consumerism, the recent wave of retail store closings and areas of strength in the brick & mortar retail environment. TGC's provides broad expertise in retail and brand consulting, as well as investor due diligence and assessments. TGC has successfully helped numerous brands navigate the layers of real estate complexity in the U.S, with specific retail real estate services, such as real estate strategy development, site selection and lease negotiation.

TGC2017-09-19T08:05:40-04:00

Hope is Not a Plan

TGC’s CEO Kevin Mullaney discusses standing strong in the face of the “retail apocalypse” There is no question that the U.S. is significantly “over-stored,” especially when compared to other developed countries. The “retail apocalypse” we’re experiencing now is a market correction that’s been looming for some time. The number of retailers who have announced meaningful store closures is staggering and there’s no doubt that a seismic shift in the retail landscape is taking place. Why is the “retail apocalypse” upon us now? The reality is this: over the last 45 years, the number of U.S. malls has grown at a rate that has far outpaced the U.S. population. Unproductive malls that should have been closed have instead been kept artificially afloat through “bundling” leases in unproductive centers with those in highly desirable malls. The straw that broke the camel’s back was a substantial decline in mall traffic and the record number [...]

TGC2018-03-26T08:55:13-04:00

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