Bath & Body Works is the most recent company to join the ever-growing retail turnaround club, announcing its new strategy—”Consumer First Formula”—after its latest performance didn’t quite pass the smell test.

Net sales dropped 1% in the third quarter, while its fourth and typically largest quarter is off to a slow start, performances that “didn’t live up to the expectations we have for this brand,” said Daniel Heaf, a former Nike exec who took the helm in May, on its Q3 earnings call.

Heaf outlined some of the company’s shortcomings: Expansions into adjacent categories haven’t paid off and are distracting from its core. Overreliance on collaborations and promotions “erodes brand equity.” The organization has become “slow and inefficient,” unsuccessful in attracting new and younger shoppers, and hasn’t changed to meet modern consumers’ needs—efficacy, emotive storytelling, and modern packaging among them—like its competitors have.

Because of this, Heaf said “swift and decisive action” is needed. With the Consumer First Formula, future product development will focus on body care, home fragrance, soaps, and sanitizers. New products, including “new forms, vessels, and formulas,” are expected to launch in the second half of next year. In the meantime, it’ll cut down its product offerings, nixing hair and men’s grooming to make stores “less overwhelming,” and focus on trend-forward products and undermarketed core products.

Keep reading here.—EC

Black Friday is almost here. That means that in a couple of days, hard data will start trickling in that could give us a taste of how the holiday shopping season is shaping up. In the meantime, numerous predictions and forecasts have circulated, and Retail Brew has assembled them here ahead of the big weekend.

Here are some topline numbers:

• A record 186.9 million people plan to shop during the five-day period including Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday, per the National Retail Federation. That’s up more than 3 million shoppers from last year.
• Among shoppers, expectations of steep discounts persist even as they spread out their holiday shopping. An Adobe Analytics survey found that 49% believe they will see the best deals on Friday. Indeed, the five-day period is expected to drive 17.2% of overall holiday spend, up 6.3% YoY.
• Deloitte predicts an uptick in participation, with 82% of respondents saying they plan to shop over the holiday period, up from 79% last year.
• However, the research firm is also anticipating a 4% decline in average spend, bringing the total down to $622 per household. Among those planning to cut their spending, 69% cited higher cost of living, while 43% cited financial constraints.
• Yet for all the interest in saving money, a study from WalletHub found that 36% of products would offer no real savings from their pre-Black Friday prices.

Keep reading here.—AV

If there’s one story Julian Kegel loves to tell, it’s about the day his great-grandmother Anna was “caught” by federal agents with flasks of whiskey hidden in her pockets during Prohibition. Luckily for the Kegel family, Wisconsin became the first state to decriminalize enforcement of Prohibition in 1928, and the ticket was tossed out—”saving” the family business.

Kegel’s great-grandfather, John Kegel Sr., had opened Kegel’s Inn, a German restaurant that operated as a “soda pop parlor” on the surface, with beer brewing in the basement and whiskey poured for the lunch crowd. “We have a whole line of collaboration beers that tell the story of Prohibition and how the restaurant has grown slowly over the years,” Kegel told Retail Brew.

As the Milwaukee institution celebrates 100 years in business, stories like Kegel’s underscore how small, family-run establishments are woven deeply into communities and how they don’t always have access to the financial support they need to thrive.

Keep reading here.—JS

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