Two Major Retail Themes Right Now

Earlier this month at the Inspired Home Show, we were able to spend time with Target, Wal-Mart, Amazon, Wayfair, Meijer, Fred Meyer, Big Lots, Dollar General, and others. Here is what we learned.

Mar 23, 2023

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Earlier this month my company attended The Inspired Home Show (formerly known as the International Housewares Show) in Chicago. We have been attending this show for many, many decades as it is a great opportunity to spend time with most of our retail partners to discuss our business partnership but to also show them many of our new products for the year ahead.

There is always such a great cross-section of retailers at the show that we are able to spend very quality time with. For instance, Target, Wal-Mart, Amazon, Wayfair, Meijer, Fred Meyer, Big Lots, Dollar General, The Container Store… just to name a few.

These meetings are always interesting because it provides us a first hand opportunity to learn not what Wall Street pundits are screaming about daily on CNBC and other media outlets, but rather it provides us a real, authentic opportunity to understand what retailers are seeing at the ground level as it relates to consumer behavior and their own strategies.

This year, there were two very common themes we heard loud and clear from our discussions that seemed to be a common thread across all retailers:

Theme #1: It’s “back to basics”.

Retailers are shifting their focus back to their “core” — meaning, they are doubling down on what they have always done best and not investing as heavily in new or experimental things. That is not to say that they aren’t testing new merchandising concepts or strategies, but they are all (and I do mean ALL) going back to basics and instead of being good at many things, trying to be great at one overarching thing core to their own DNA.

When the cost of money gets expensive, which it most definitely has as compared to just 6 months ago, this type of “back to basics” approach makes a lot of sense and I was not surprised by this overarching theme.

Theme #2: Retailers still understand inventory levels among suppliers are high. Price decrease pressure is not here… yet.

There is great concern in the supplier community about when retailers will start demanding lower prices for product as inflation begins to cool and as inbound container freight costs have plummeted from crazy high pandemic levels. Like us, so many suppliers (and retailers) are still working through a significant amount of inventory that was imported at such high freight costs that having to sell at lower pricing to reflect the “reality” of freight costs today would be incredibly painful financially. With that said, those price decrease pressures are going to start coming, but I am glad to say that while we thought we would be walking into a hornet’s nest in Chicago of these pressures, it was not the key focus of conversations.

Side note: I was able to meet two founders in Chicago of companies I admire greatly:

One was Niraj Shah, the co-founder of Wayfair. He is an incredibly bright visionary, but also an unbelievably kind person. I enjoyed our conversation.
I was also able to finally meet Mike Beckham, founder of Simple Modern, with whom I have gotten to know on Twitter pretty well. I have been fascinated by this company and the innovative ways they have taken a significant amount of market share at retailers for tumblers. Mike is a visionary in his own right, and it was great to spend some time together.

If any of you are in retail, I would love to hear your take on these themes. Please leave a comment below and let’s keep the discussion going!

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