Amazon gets blamed for quite a bit of upheaval in the retail sector, but some experts don’t buy it. One of them is the CEO of upscale retailer Williams-Sonoma, Laura Alber.
Williams-Sonoma CEO Laura Alber: ‘I do not believe Amazon is killing retailers’
Williams-Sonoma CEO Laura Alber is still bullish about brick-and-mortar retail in spite of the looming threat of Amazon. “I certainly don’t think we’re in the midst of a retail apocalypse,” Alber said. “I do not believe that and I do not believe that Amazon is killing retailers.
Interviewed in Recode, Alber simply doesn’t buy into a coming retail ‘apocalypse’, saying:
I believe retailers’ bad service is killing retailers. And I think because of that you might not go to the malls as much as you used to.
A Focus On Service
Indeed that’s the very area Alber and her team are focusing on: customer service. And she says “…not just in-store but also the delivery”. She explains:
We just got done with a board meeting; we measured every single piece of our delivery to the customer [and] we’re now having customers rate at us at every single point.
Moving large-scale furniture is difficult, which is why it’s a huge differentiator. If you can do something hard well that’s an advantage.
And Some New Technology
But she doesn’t think the firm can get where they want with service alone. Their Pottery Barn brand has worked with Google on an augmented reality (AR) app to allow customers to visualize the company’s products in their own homes. Alber describes it this way:
We want to lead on these things. We knew the Tango phone, there’s not a lot of them out there. We’re great partners with Google [and] we do a lot of things with them. But we also did it because we wanted to be ready when it came on the Apple phone. The Tango phone had the depth perception that allowed this to happen.
Even with about 140,000 3-D models built for their application, Alber admits that there are few Tango phones out there so the current application is used mostly in stores. “What I’m focused on is putting our application on the Apple phone,” she said.
It’s Tough To Stay On Top Of Everything
Whether it’s growth in digital competition for traditional retailers or new methods of attracting and retaining customers, there’s no doubt that the retail landscape is a very dynamic thing. If you’re an active investor in the retail sector, or considering a move to those types of investments, you need expert help.
The staff at Pacwest Commercial Real Estate are experts in commercial real estate of all types. A big part of our job is keeping up to date on everything that affects our clients’ investments. Give us a call at 541-912-6583 to get started!
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