Four major multi-category retailers that released their 2024 financial results in the last month showed significant declines in sales of home goods. The category often (but not always) lagged behind other segments, according to the companies’ filings and third-party analyses of the results. The numbers illustrate the continued challenges that have been facing this sector […]
Tag Archives | Kohl’s
A Matter of Pride
By Karen Raugust on June 17, 2024 in Branding/marketing, Diversity/Inclusion, Licensing, Politics/social movements
The significant consumer backlash suffered by companies such as Target, Bud Light, Disney, Starbucks, the L.A. Dodgers, and others for their Pride promotions in 2023 has led some key companies to reduce their public support of Pride Month in 2024, or avoid acknowledging the moment altogether. For example: Target is cutting back on its Pride […]
Celebrating Pacific Island Culture
By Karen Raugust on December 11, 2023 in Demographic groups, Diversity/Inclusion, Fashion, Licensing
During the past three years, fashion companies have ramped up collaborative activities with designers, celebrities, and labels from underrepresented communities, in an effort to diversify their industry. That includes seeking out partners hailing from the Pacific Islands, which are situated across a vast area of the Pacific Ocean, extending from the U.S. West Coast to […]
Augmenting Adaptive Apparel Assortments
By Karen Raugust on October 30, 2023 in Celebrity, Demographic groups, Diversity/Inclusion, Fashion, Licensing
The fashion industry has been slowly putting more focus on consumers with disabilities since the mid-2010s, when it began picking up the pace of adaptive apparel releases. The technique has been flourishing in the last 18 months, as the business has seen several launches of adaptive clothing lines from retailers and brands, not to mention […]
Making News with Consumer Products
Legacy newspaper and magazine brands have been struggling financially for years, in part because of increased competition from digital news and information sites. More recently, however, the latter have been facing equally steep challenges, as consumers rely less on—and often mistrust—official news organizations and turn instead to independent, often opinion-driven sources they follow on social […]
Black Beauty
By Karen Raugust on April 21, 2022 in Demographic groups, Diversity/Inclusion, Health/beauty, Licensing, Retail
Retailers’ beauty departments represent one area where progress has been made on the road toward more diversity, equity, and inclusion over the past two years, and change continues. While each effort is unique, in general retailers have diversified their product mix to make more offerings available for women of all colors and skin and hair […]
Retailers Rethink Beauty
Four of the major U.S. mid-tier and mass retailers are launching new beauty concepts, three this month and one in the fall. All have in common a focus on younger shoppers, synergies between in-store and online executions, and an emphasis on products for consumers of all ethnicities. The goal is to capture new consumers at […]
Here Come the Bridal Designers
High-end bridal designers who got their start specializing in wedding dresses, and remain well known for their creations in this space, have been expanding their licensing activity recently. Some are poised to get into licensing and collaboration in a significant way for the first time, while others are adding to a long list of existing […]
From Recommendations to Retail
Digital-native lifestyle content platforms for millennial women are powerful influencers of consumer behavior, through trend coverage and especially product recommendations on their web and social channels. They are also cultivating their own presence in the world of licensing, collaboration, and brand extension, as illustrated by a raft of recent deals: Glossier, a beauty brand that […]
Adaptive Products: An Unexplored Opportunity
Companies with ties to licensing are increasingly creating products for consumers with special needs, an underserved population. This customer segment encompasses everyone from children with autism to people of all ages with conditions such as Parkinson’s disease or multiple sclerosis, to seniors who have trouble getting dressed due to dementia or physical ailments. Some of […]