Retail Consulting

My best friend recently introduced me to a podcast series called ACQUIRED, hosted by Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal. They do deep‑dive explorations into the stories and strategies behind some of the world’s most successful companies. While I may be late to the game, I’m fully obsessed now—currently binging episodes. Two of my favorites so far are the Costco and Trader Joe’s episodes. They’re fantastic examples of companies that managed to reinvent themselves over time while staying true to their core mission and values. If you haven’t listened yet, I highly recommend starting with the Costco episode: 🔗 https://lnkd.in/esbcQyAm Enjoy! Kevin Mullaney CEO The Grayson Company

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, [...]

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 [...]