{"id":40439,"date":"2016-01-20T13:50:00","date_gmt":"2016-01-20T18:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mytotalretail.com\/post\/?p=40439"},"modified":"2016-01-20T13:50:00","modified_gmt":"2016-01-20T18:50:00","slug":"takeaways-nrf-big-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mytotalretail.com\/takeaways-nrf-big-show\/","title":{"rendered":"Takeaways From the NRF Big Show"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve just returned from the <a href=\"http:\/\/bigshow16.nrf.com\/\">National Retail Federation&#8217;s Big Show<\/a> in New York City, and I thought this would be a good opportunity to give those of you who didn&#8217;t make it to the show some of the major takeaways I have after spending two days wandering the vast Jacob Javits Convention Center. So without further adieu &#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Brick-and-mortar stores are back in vogue. You would have been hard-pressed to find a single attendee that didn&#8217;t believe physical stores have value and will play a major &#8212; albeit different &#8212; role in retail&#8217;s future. In fact, it seems to me that most retailers are focusing on improving consumers&#8217; in-store shopping experiences with digital tools and functionality. This represents a sea change from a few years ago when the majority of retailers&#8217; time and money was being poured into their e-commerce sites, rather than sinking money into what at the time was considered a dying breed &#8212; stores.<\/li>\n<li>The buzzword &#8220;omnichannel&#8221; is dying. This retailer-created term (I don&#8217;t think a customer knows or cares about omnichannel) is standard operating procedure now for most brands. Consumers expect and demand a good experience every time and in every channel they interact with your brand.<\/li>\n<li>RFID is making a charge. Back to the omnichannel conversation from the point above, having a technology that can connect the online and offline worlds is becoming more important by the day, especially for critical functions like inventory transparency.<\/li>\n<li>Is it me, or does the weather take a turn for the worse every year for the Big Show? What had been a very mild start to winter in the Northeast was replaced by two frigid days in the Big Apple.<\/li>\n<li>Good store associates and customer service reps are worth their weight in gold. I heard over and over again how valuable these employees are. They&#8217;re on the front lines and know your brand&#8217;s customers best. A good experience with a store associate can begin a relationship with a customer for a lifetime; a bad experience can drive that shopper away for a lifetime. People, product and pricing still go a long way in determining the success or failure of a retail business.<\/li>\n<li>Data scientists and engineers are in demand. If you have a child in college or soon will be, it may be a good idea to encourage them to look into this field. They won&#8217;t be looking for that first job for long. With the immense amount of data that retailers are collecting and storing, there&#8217;s a shortage of people qualified to analyze it and make sense of it all. Nearly all of the retailers I spoke with at NRF said they&#8217;re looking to grow their IT\/data teams.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you were at the Big Show, let me know what your takeaways were. It would be great to get a conversation started.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve just returned from the National Retail Federation&#8217;s Big Show in New York City, and I thought this would be a good opportunity to give those of you who didn&#8217;t make it to the show some of the major takeaways I have after spending two days wandering the vast Jacob Javits Convention Center. So without [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":40421,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"coauthors":[102957],"class_list":["post-40439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-retail-stores","tag-brick-and-mortar-stores","tag-customer-service","tag-customer-service-reps","tag-data-engineers","tag-data-scientists","tag-in-store-technology","tag-inventory-transparency","tag-national-retail-federation","tag-nrf","tag-nrf-big-show","tag-omnichannel","tag-physical-stores","tag-retail-stores","tag-rfid","tag-service","tag-store-associates","editorial_type-columnsopinions","location-jacob-javits-convention-center","location-new-york-city","blog_channel-retail-rants-raves"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Takeaways From the NRF Big Show - Total Retail<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I\u2019ve just returned from the National Retail Federation\u2019s Big Show in New York City, and I thought this would be a good opportunity to give those of you who didn\u2019t make it to the show some of the major takeaways I have after spending two days wandering the vast Jacob Javits Convention Center. 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