Sapna Shah is keeping a close eye on retail behavior this holiday season. As a principal of consulting firm Retail Eye Partners, along with her partner Lisa Walters, Shah spends virtually every day visiting dozens of apparel, department, home furnishings and mass merchant stores and reporting her findings. Shah and Walters have visited more than 40,000 stores since founding the company in 2006 and release reports of what kinds of discounts and promotions they are seeing to their mailing list, sometimes multiple times a day. As Black Friday approaches, they are seeing a distinct trend toward lower inventories, more prominent signage and faster action from consumers as they try to grab up deals. Brandweek spoke with Shah about her work and what exactly is happening in retail stores this time of year.
Brandweek: So you shop for a living?
Sapna Shah: We go out to malls all over the country six or seven days a week and watch sell-throughs, inventories, promotions, mark-downs, clearance levels, shopper traffic--all of those elements that go into evaluating in-store performance. We've been doing it for almost four years and have a proprietary methodology to how we do it. There is an order of markets and malls that we follow: We make sure that we go to our same markets in the same order at the same time of day so we can compare it to this history and this database we have and info we have collected over the past four years. While both Lisa, my business partner, and I are based out of the New York area, we travel to malls around the country. We hit five major markets a month and about 13 major markets a quarter.
We put out these reports every week throughout the year covering the companies we do follow. Coming closer to the holiday we put out more ad-hoc reports on things that are changing that day. Right now our cadence is up to two a day of “this is something interesting that’s happening in the mall” kind of reports, so it’s getting to be a busy season right now.
BW: Does it get repetitive going to the same stores over and over again?
SS: Retail is constantly changing; it is so dynamic from store to store. There are similarities across the country. (If you've been into 30 Gap stores in a month, the 31st isn't going to look all that different to you). But then there are those surprises: you find a test store where they’re pulling in the assortment early and you get to see what's coming ahead that you haven't seen yet. Or regional differences in terms of what colors sell, what kind of styles are selling.
Retail is changing constantly. Most specialty retailers are bringing in new looks between every two and six weeks, so there's always something new to see, always new markdowns being taken, changes made to floor fixtures and staffing. It never gets boring.
BW: So what are the trends you are seeing this holiday season?
SS: We think this holiday is going to look a little different than what everyone has gotten used to in the past few years. Previously, we've seen the few days prior to Christmas are when the bulk of purchases happen. That's when the best deals are and when retailers are trying to unload their inventory. It’s also because the shopping culture has become one of procrastination. Over time we've seen that shoppers buy closer to need—that's happened for back to school, holiday shopping and Easter shopping. This year we're seeing that shoppers are buying when there is a good deal.
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