The generation with the most buying power sets the trends in retail and Generation Z is stepping up for their time in the sun. Gen Z will represent 40 percent of customers by 2020 and, as they come of age, its quickly becoming apparent that the way we think about industry and fashion trends needs to evolve to mirror their purchasing mentality. This generation doesn\’t take fashion and retail norms at face value, so doing things the way things have always been done is a death sentence for retailers. Growing up in the Golden Age of social media where the next hot thing is always being advertised has made Gen Z skeptical of trends. Refinery29 reports, \”The old rules that the fashion industry has lived and died by (like status symbols and mass trends) ring hollow to them.\”

Gen Z isn\’t into flaunting their economic status by buying clothing that is needlessly expensive without serving a purpose. Buying products to fit in or to flex equates to conformity for Gen Z consumers, and conformity isn\’t looked favorably. This means we are going to see less of a push for everyone to own the same brand or product. There will be no mass exodus to Abercrombie, or a store that\’s an Abercrombie equivalent – like there was for us older millennials – and the only must-own-it items I\’ve seen catch on with Gen Z consumers are Kylie lip kits and the Fjallraven Kanten backpack–which was actually designed for Swedish schoolkids in 1978, but caught on with Gen Z after being featured in the feeds of trending young art bloggers on YouTube.

Since Gen Z is growing up in an era when many major environmental changes are beginning to take effect and radical climate change will happen during their lifetimes, they are concerned about the environment out of self-preservation. The consumer mentality is one of \”Change needs to happen now, or else,\” and the products Gen Z gravitates towards will reflect this shift in mentality. There is no denying the environmental impact of their choices for Gen Z, which is why they are more likely to stay loyal to retailers that champion sustainability. Mainstream retailers will need to start getting very concerned and transparent about their supply chains if they want to remain mainstream after the changing of the guards.

The way Generation Z sources and responds to trends is also different. Gen Z is focused on being the first to discover obscure brands and products by following influencers who are in the know, or by doing independent research online. Trends will more be individualistic and less about brand identification as they come into their own, but there will still be trends. Retailers will just need to dig a lot deeper to identify them.

Typecasting Teens Into Subcultures Is no Longer a Thing

Remember the bit about Gen Z consumers being highly individualistic? That\’s because Gen Z customers don\’t fall into high school and college subculture roles- those Breakfast Club tropes such as hippy, goth, jock, prep just don\’t resonate anymore. There was a time in the early 2000s when Hot Topic and Spencer gifts could count on sharing the sales that weren\’t taking place at Abercrombie, but that time has long since passed. We\’re living in an era of choices. Instead of locking down a teen or early 20-something\’s tribe to predict their purchasing behavior, retailers now need to use a Venn Diagram of past behavior and future trends to find the sweet spot of merch that their Gen Z consumer will find exciting… they need to do it every time, for every single customer that shops their brand.

A lot of publications have come out saying that Gen Z looks to influencers instead of traditional celebrities for purchasing inspiration. This is true, but it\’s not as cut and dry as celebrity marketing was with prior generations. Recent celebrity influencer scandals, such as the now infamous Fyre Festival debacle and the social media maelstrom that went down when Jameela Jamil called out the Kardashians for promoting dangerous detox teas have brought some harsh realities of the influencer marketing world into a very unflattering light. Namely, that certain well-known influencers not only never use the products they get paid to promote, but that the products aren\’t even necessarily of decent quality or safe for use/consumption. So sure, Gen Z consumers identify with the influencers they follow, and they may even look into the products promoted on their channels, but transparency and call-out culture mean that blind consumption will soon be a thing of the past. In the end the product needs to be strong enough to live up to the hype.

There\’s a Divide Between Frugality and Luxury

There\’s an interesting dichotomy when it comes to what Gen Z customers are willing to pay for goods. On one hand, they grew up during a recession and are freakishly frugal. On the other, they\’re singlehandedly resuscitating a luxury goods market that their millennial predecessors brought to its knees. WSL Strategic Retail reports that 55 percent of the Gen Z population is spending more time in dollar stores and mass merchandisers and around 40 percent say they\’re spending more time in consignment shops. Yet Gen Zs are also frequenting stores like Vans, The North Face, and UGG, revealing an affinity for mid-market luxury brands that isn\’t shared by millennials.

At first glance it may seem difficult to understand a generation that will switch retailers over a 25-cent price difference on a pair of socks but will also shell out $250 on a North Face jacket without batting an eye. But for the Gen Z consumer it\’s simple: it\’s all about value. It\’s true that Gen Z consumers aren\’t willing to pay a premium for everyday goods that they can get cheaper elsewhere. Like millennials, Gen Z has no qualms about putting some groundwork into researching products to find the best possible deal. Yet the value of a product is more important than the product\’s cost alone. Nextgen consumers have had the experience of buying a product that deteriorates after a few uses and they have seen the environmental aftermath of the fast-fashion crisis. Gen Z equates product longevity with both value and sustainability–their two biggest priorities when deciding what to purchase. The longer a product lasts and the better it is for the environment… the more Gen Z consumers will be willing to invest to make it their own.

New Standards are Being Set for Diversity

Nearly half (49 percent) of Gen Z is non-white and they expect to see themselves reflected in the online catalogs and Instagram stories of the brands they patronize. This doesn\’t mean that brands should use 18-year old, size 2 models with chemically straightened hair either. While millennials may have gravitated towards airbrushed images from brands on social media, Gen Z wants to see unique, realistic-looking models of all different shapes, sizes, gender identities, and ethnicities– and they want brands to sell products that encourage them to embrace their natural look instead of products geared towards trying to alter their appearance. The shift in purchasing mentality is especially evident in the cosmetics and lingerie industries.

Gen Z consumers spend more on beauty than they spend on apparel, so brands need to rethink how they approach beauty manufacturing and advertising. Things that were \”can\’t touch it, won\’t touch it\” issues for brands in the past, such as race, gender, sexual orientation, political stance and religious beliefs are table stakes for brands today. Mainstream cosmetic brands like CoverGirl and Maybelline are shaking up gender norms by using male beauty influencers to promote products. Gen Z targeted brands are coming out with bold and playful products that encourage consumers to express themselves in their own way, as well as products that can help young customers get selfie-ready in a flash, such as quick contouring sticks, mattifying face spray, and makeup brushes designed for quick applications on the go.

In the lingerie sector, it\’s worth noting that supermodels will no longer be stomping down the Victoria\’s Secret runway for the annual Fashion Show on network TV this year. While this was publicly attributed to the fact that footage of the show was being leaked on social media before the event was aired, it\’s unrealistic to think that Gen Z\’s distaste for all things airbrushed didn\’t play into the decision to funnel marketing resources into new concepts. Harper\’s Bazaar reports that the flailing lingerie behemoth will instead be focused on \”developing exciting and dynamic content and a new kind of event.\” And if Victoria\’s Secret wants to stick around, the new event and future products will be more focused on diversity and inclusion that on maintaining beauty standards that don\’t resonate with young shoppers. Padded bras and angel wings could give way to comfortable products customers can actually move in, for instance, and relatable-looking young influencers could be added to the mix of supermodels.

No generation is completely immune to the influence of trends. Yet Generation Z expects retailers to work with them to create products that are good for their wallets, for their self-esteem, and for the planet. To provide this, retailers need to loosen their grip on how things used to be done and start looking forward to what next-generation consumers might expect from brands in the future– which rest assured will be even more diverse, more affirming, more sustainable, more connected and more authentic than what they\’re purchasing today.

The profitable world of previously-owned is not just for Mercedes anymore. Consider the emerging retail reality: Empty storefronts on Main Street, shuttered malls, bankrupt chains. Could it be that consumers have lost interest in the acquisition of new stuff? That a consumer economy has, yes, morphed into the long-foretold experience economy? That LVMH\’s decision to enter the luxury cruise market is simply one further storm cloud serving as the forerunner of the retail tsunami on the horizon?

My 19-year-old daughter\’s absolute favorite shopping experience wherever we go – Paris, London, Dublin, Peoria, Savannah and, of course, Manhattan, is evidenced by her predictable plea to go \”thrifting.\” I have come to understand that in the precious and overly-curated chains which should be her go-to brands, she finds boring predictability, bored sales staff and uninspired merchandise. Yet, the goal of a great shopping experience is straightforward: Discovery in the pursuit and Lucky in the acquisition. And not lucky because the merchandise is perennially marked 40 percent off.

The Great Narrative

Thrift stores embody that seductive discovery journey and self-discovery. Touching blouses that evoke a different place in time enhances the experience with an almost folkloric quality imagining the woman who wore this blouse in the imagined world in which she protested the Vietnam War and sung songs of protest along with other college juniors who worked hard to sound like Joan Baez. Or the jeans from an era in which they might well have been worn to that Queen concert. Or the tee-shirt obviously used and abused at a first-generation Jingle Ball. There is a thrill in the imagined, the evoked, the what-if of stuff with backstories enhanced by its prior lives.

Upscale Turnover

This notion of thrifting is not limited to the world of $10 a bag. The larger strategy of monetizing the second and perhaps third lives of products is illustrated by the success of companies specializing in buying your no-longer-wanted fine jewelry. Once viewed as upscale pawn shops, they are now seen as charming boutiques providing a sophisticated and confidential service. Rent the Runway is another path to the time-sharing of designer merchandise. Poshmark.com at the lower end and TheRealReal.com for the upscale provide equivalent own-it-until-you\’re-bored-by-it service. Do you think this is simply a dotcom play? Not so much. Consider the L Train and Vintage Twin. Both retail shops with a previously-owned panache, but no frisson of helping the homeless with each purchase. No these are for-profit endeavors, for sure. All these approaches allow us to own the brand tropes we care to use as personality badges; and then shed them when they no longer reflect our new image of ourselves.

This approach isn\’t a retail panacea for all products. The type of brands that don\’t work in this model, that have no resale value are the fast-fashion knock-offs and cheap-at-twice-the-price offerings of big box stores, down-market chains and online behemoths. These brands are nearly unbranded, except by price point. In the world of $28 jeans, who cares who made them or how long they\’ll last?

Tax Deductible

Goodwill stores, Housing Works and many churches\’ \”Second Time Around\” fundraisers have served an equivalent role for large-scale items. Ready to redecorate the dining room? Call for removal by one or another non-profit and they\’ll hand you a tax-deduction in exchange for that embarrassing sofa from your first marriage and the tea cart you inherited from a great aunt.

In short, in every case, except automotive and housing, the management of the secondary market has been left to interlopers. New entities emerge, whether to buy and resell your grandmother\’s ring, or buy and resell that Louis Vuitton emblazoned tote you\’re too embarrassed to carry any more or to accept the tax-deductible donation that fold-out sofa that doesn\’t quite fold out anymore.

Ikea Innovation

Into this mix, however, comes a new idea, just announced by Ikea. It seems this classic stop on the just-graduated-college-and-getting-my-first-apartment highway is exploring a move in its business model. This same cohort is seen to eschew products which are not sustainably made, which are not well-designed, which are not solidly built. Suffice it to say, Ikea\’s warehouse model, chock-a-block with mothers shopping with their recalcitrant sons and their new roommates does not proffer a long-term, repeat business opportunity. And, Ikea has noticed.

Enter Ikea into the secondary market, deciding to make better furniture and offer it for rent. Yes, that\’s right. For rent. The mind reels, of course. Will they take apart the furniture when it\’s returned and make new customers schlepp it home and re-assemble it? Will the warehouse look-and feel be disbanded for a new, more urban vibe? Will Ikea deliver? Offer assembly at home? Will it Wayfair itself? In short, does this one bold announcement auger an entirely new retail approach? Imagine that it does. This is the first moment in this emerging secondary market of a brand insinuating itself into the model. This isn\’t a reseller intervening, this is the manufacturer/retailer recognizing that as it currently makes and sells its products, there is no one waiting to buy used Ikea furniture.

I know the low value of used Ikea furniture from the online bulletin board in my apartment building. Scores of three-drawer Ikea chests are on offer weekly, rolling out at a suggested $60, then \”best offer\” and then \”free, take it today.\” We know all too well what the brand stands for, affordably priced, irritatingly merchandised and manufactured with a \”use by date\” that coincides perfectly with the end of the lease on that first apartment.

Sure, Mercedes, BMW, Lexus and others have developed \”previously-owned\” propositions. But furniture and home furnishings not so much. Imagine if Bloomingdale\’s offered a buy-back, trade-in proposition for the amazing goods showcased in upper reaches of the Lexington Avenue store? Or ABC Carpet & Home? It\’s a game changer. Almost like a subscription to Peet\’s Coffee or Amazon\’s Subscribe and Save.

The pulse points of major home purchases are well documented. Remember Gail Sheehy\’s Passages? I always wanted her to write Marketing Passages. We move into new needs every seven years. Ikea nailed the first one: First apartment, mother in tow. Next is the move-into-together apartment, e.g. the roommates are gone, but the love interest is very much present. Then, first marriage and usually first home. Then, first child and maybe another, then larger home. Of course, the downsizing moment eventually arrives and then the relocation to the gated community. Predictable? Of course. Life stages are inevitable. And each is a catalyst to a remarkable series of purchases.

Ikea\’s historic reliance on the first rung on the ladder has worked wonderfully for the brand. Get them in early, when all things in life are possible, including reading and understanding assembling instructions. But, the fall-off is pretty steep. Perhaps the brand survives a shopping trip arranged by the newly ensconced couple, but most probably the \’old\’ Ikea choices from the earlier vintage don\’t survive.

In this new version of the Ikea experience, that young person rents the basics and then turns it in at each step along the path. A previously-owned, well-made and well-maintained sofa arrives with complementary side chairs at a price point well within reach vs. the investment required to purchase new from the more usual suspects. The costs are significant to furnish the Cape Cod in suburbia, replete with nursery, child\’s room and, well, a man cave somewhere out of sight.
Ikea is invigorating the \”previously owned\” model, introducing it into the world of mainstream merchandise, without waiting for the home goods version of The RealReal or Poshmark. Could Ralph, Calvin or Tiffany be far behind? Imagine a retail setting that includes not one Bloomingdale\’s Outlet, Neiman-Marcus Last Call, Nordstrom Rack or any of the countless other factory outlet varietals, but rather has the \”previously-owned\” showroom of fabulous merchandise. Sure RealReal, Poshmark and Salvation Army thrift stores will be unhinged, but think what it might mean for customers, brands and a gee-whiz thing called brand loyalty.

The retail industry may be under siege, but when it comes to the holidays, they are the mothership optically for nostalgia, sentimentality and remembrance of better things past. If you live in an urban area with sidewalk traffic, it is the retail stores that shape our childhood memories of the holidays. Gift mongering aside, retail stores are the stage sets for what dreams are made of. Walk into the few department stores still standing, and you\’ll be dazzled by the holiday decorations and sentimental simulations of a happy, loving world. It is a welcome antidote to a dysfunctional global culture that is becoming increasingly fractured and hostile.

So, we decided to take a stroll down New York\’s avenues and memory lanes to kick start the holidays. Amazingly, in a melting-pot city with the largest Jewish population in the world outside of Israel, the city is an unabashed celebration of Christmas, Santa and seriously Christmas-driven traditions. We started our research with the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, which still redefines the notion of spectacular. The precision of the dancers is only equaled by the astonishing tech precision of the digital special effects, including dancing-light drones. The beloved, endangered department store plays a front-and-center role in the pageant. Those holiday windows, street decorations and the 57th Street suspended snowflake set the room tone in the 6015-seat theater. What would we do without holiday windows, brightening the boulevards with visual stories designed to bring out our better childlike selves? And what is more dramatic than 36 Raggedy Ann Rockettes rising magically from below the stage to tap dance their way out of the store window display into our hearts.

Retail stores and iconic hotels are the best places to get a dose of what the holidays look and feel like in a nostalgic world. The enclosed malls don\’t have the same window dressing potential, and the mixed-use shopping centers have been transformed into holiday theme-park villages. Of course, there are also the best efforts of city plazas coast to coast. Beverly Hills does a crack-up job with festive holiday lights illuminating its municipal buildings. These theatrical stage sets capture a magic most households can\’t match. Although the light displays in the front yards in selected neighborhoods across the country are becoming almost commercially-viable attractions, it\’s the stores that have made us feel sentimental wonder and awe.

True confession, this theme has been seminal for me since I was a small child growing up in the suburbs of St. Louis where my mother would load my brothers and me into the station wagon and drive all the way downtown to see the windows, sit in Santa\’s lap and chat about what we thought we deserved. What is it about this experience as a child that sticks with us as a bright beacon in an unforgiving world? Oddly, retail stores perform a public service recapturing the idea of a more innocent Christmas filled with giving. Ironically, the nostalgic décor is a veneer for price promotion and an almost greed-driven motivation for the spending spirit. Giving these days comes at 40 percent off, wrapped in brightly patterned paper and ribbon, not from the heart as the original intention suggests. And giving has been subterfuged by Black Friday and Cyber Monday. According to Vice, \”The holiday season in America is one giant spending fest, as the months of November and December can account for 30 percent of a brand\’s sales, according to the National Retail Federation. Between Black Friday deals and other pre-Christmas shopping, Americans will spend about $720 billion – and companies employ many time-tested tactics to ensure they do.\” Sadly, the in-store experience usually doesn\’t match the festive display aspirations, so there is a massive disconnect for customers who expect a genuine, nostalgic holiday journey.

I know this obsession with aesthetics sounds naively sentimental, but I say let\’s thank the visual design teams at our iconic retail brands for keeping the spirit alive. To recapture the magic, we started uptown to visit the major New York stores and holiday window heroes to see how things look in 2018.

Barneys – Pennies from Heaven

Always making a cultural statement, Barney\’s got the millennial memo this year staging a major give-back promotion. The retailer is partnering with the Save the Children global humanitarian organization though the Barney\’s New York Foundation, which further elevates the campaign to do-good consumerism. It comes with a complete program of public service messaging and a #centiments social-media campaign featuring \”positive and inspirational holiday sentiments,\” plus Barneys New York Foundation will donate $5 to Save the Children for every post. Taking a page from conceptual artist Jenny Holzer (using words in public places to make a statement) the Madison Avenue windows sedately proclaim, \”Make Change, Change Counts\” in a double entendre with bold letter stenciling on the window glass. Behind the message-laden words are walls of shiny pennies as glittering background, about $56 worth of pennies in each of the four widows to be exact. This partnership with Save the Children declares it\’s \”doing well by going good\” holiday time at Barneys. Interior displays feature those highly-polished copper coins in cascades propping up trifles like Balenciaga $795 hot-pink party shoes and starry Jeffrey Levinson $4900 minaudières. The main-floor columns are shrouded with Make Change messaging and Save the Children reps are on site to tap into your inner gambler to play lotto with proceeds contributed to the cause. It\’s a win-win for the luxury shopper; get a row on the lotto card and you could rush upstairs with a $3,000 gift certificate for Barney\’s luxurious necessities. It\’s all very sincere but, in all honestly, it comes across as a little self-serving. The cause is worthy, but isn\’t the Barneys customer already this decade\’s giving nobility that helps sustains our charitable organizations and foundations? There is a fundamental disconnect here. Making Change is more a display conceit than a powerful motivation to change the world, as the signage encourages and Barneys PR states, \”even small change can have a big impact – all starting with a coin.\” They get high marks for helping children in need, but pennies at Barneys is a real oxymoron when the message doesn\’t match the environment or shopping experience. If you play the give-back card, you\’ve got to be authentic. The next gen will sniff out a fake and you\’ll lose more than you gain when they do.

Bergdorf – Sweet Tooth

This is the power corner on Fifth Avenue: Bulgari, Tiffany, Louis Vuitton and Van Cleef & Arpels/Bergdorf Goodman anchored by the 57th Street holiday star. Bergdorf has always elevated holiday windows to an art form, typically bypassing any major current cultural conversations (the windows are planned years in advance). This year they are having a referential sugar plum attack with a series of over-the-top windows focused on one form or another of candy, bonbons, cookies, macarons, ice cream – anything tempting and sweet. Spun sugar, crystalized sugar, peppermints, hard candies, gingerbread, all of it. Coincidentally, a giant vintage robot is also featured at Tiffany and appears here in crystalized sugar. As always, extraordinary designer clothes are tucked away in these fantasy vignettes. Although it\’s disarming to see male mannequins across the street at the men\’s store with English Toffee or Peeps bird heads, creating a strange Hieronymus Bosch-esque holiday tableau. Devotees study the windows detail by detail — the craftsmanship is well documented in the fascinating documentary \”The Bergdorf Windows.\” As for the interior, luxury takes the restrained route with a greige tonal suite of leafy arbor entryways and portals, off-white-on-off-white deer roaming the horizon above the display cases and a whiter shade of pale tree decorated, oddly, with guitars, a swan diving and a deer rising on its ascent to the summit. It\’s all a little strange visually and coldly impersonal, but perhaps it soothes the harried affluent customer in its colorless upscale way.

Bloomingdale\’s – Grinch Glitz

For a store that prides itself on appealing to the upscale tastes and desires of its customers, focusing on the Grinch is an interesting holiday strategy. The theme extends to its 135-page holiday catalog, as well as the windows and other promotions. It\’s a clever concept, but Bloomingdale\’s is not the first place you think of when you consider buying toys for children or getting advice from the Grinch. Nonetheless, the six Lexington Avenue flagship windows have a whimsical feeling with plenty of interactive karaoke, digital portraits, play-me buttons and Grinch excerpt videos to entice the kids.

The storyline is so high concept it may float over the heads of most viewers. The windows are stuffed with sparkling, crystal-embedded, bejeweled clothes and props in a fantasy interpretation of Whoville. None of it really makes much sense but is dazzling to the eye. The interior has lots of floating silver, golden and crystal spheres, creating sort of a holiday ballroom effect. Overdressed acrobatic mannequins perform on aerial hoops. It\’s all pretty, but the interior seems to be more a dressed-up Cirque de Soleil than the Grinch. It\’s hard to figure out the narrative and the overall effect is just a stage set, neither personally engaging nor inspiring.

Tiffany – Vintage Robot

Tiffany is so clearly trying to change its image to make its desirable jewels and luxury gifts accessible to a more modern, decidedly younger customer to replace the Social Register set that kept the brand vital and thriving in the past. The small windows feature high-tech digital effects combined with the clever display of sensational jewels with everyday objects.

Tiffany takes a page from Louis Marx and Company\’s toy robots produced in Japan in the 60s, originally created to captivate space and robot fans when the U.S. was in the space race with the then-Soviet Union. The in-store Tiffany-blue brigade of these giant versions of the coveted robot toys make a signature statement. These vintage robots are charming but probably only recognizable to the Boomer parents of millennial customers Tiffany is courting. It looks like the retailer is betting on its signature blue as the bridge to the next generation; blue-box wreaths hang over head, little blue gift boxes are sprinkled liberally throughout the store and all the props are painted blue. Prerequisite huge flat screens with vibrant imagery flank the famous elevators, still run by helpful human operators. Retro is the prevailing theme, and Tiffany-blue displays of vintage electronics evoke Korean-American mixed-media artist Nam Juin Paik who made the assemblage of stacked TV sets an avant-garde art form. The most interesting holiday innovation is a large Apple store-like glass box set center stage on the main selling floor. Artisans are busy at work crafting Tiffany jewelry and you can watch them, enhanced by mirrors placed above them like a cooking demonstration. This is a brilliant move to make the elusive quality of handcrafted significant jewelry more accessible. Tiffany wins the congeniality award of the most friendly, sincere greeters (on every floor) who are genuinely helpful. They immediately engender trust and confidence for first-time visitors. They make the entire experience exactly what the holiday spirit is supposed to be: personal and real.

Saks Fifth Avenue – Theatrical Drama

Saks is also playing the giveback card, similar to Barneys, by partnering with Broadway Cares. Opening night featured 124 dancers and an extravagant light show to unveil its windows. You can sponsor a lightbulb on the facade of Saks with all proceeds going to Broadway Cares and Saks guarantees that the minimum donation will be at least $150,000. The red-themed Theater of Dreams Fifth Avenue windows are the best example of making you feel you want one of everything. As are the six windows facing Rockefeller Promenade, each an act in the Theater of Dreams. The visual is fabulous with fantasy videos as backdrops to each vignette of a beautifully-dressed mannequin with her poodle channeling a luxe holiday. Encased in a snow globe sans snow, each of the six acts are riveting. Sadly, for Saks the main floor is being renovated and shoppers are tunneled into a makeshift red-carpet cattle shoot, buffeted by Loro Piana cashmere on the way to the elevator bank. You have to be a committed shopper to shuffle along in line to reach the prize. After such a rich exterior display that promises an equally spectacular experience in the store, your entry is a real let-down. Upstairs, the refurbished floors are airy and filled with racks of expensive clothes all at 40 percent off.

Rockefeller Center – Bonus Points

This year\’s 75-year-old tress is a 72-foot, 12-ton Norway spruce from Wallkill, New York, about 80 miles north of the City. A mind-boggling five miles of intensely colored LED lights wrap around the tree topped with a new star made of thee million Swarovski crystals. It stands sentinel to the ice skaters and tourists who flock to the Center to be immersed in 1930\’s architectural wonder. Those angels are back in the Promenade playing their trumpets in stasis, subjects of never-ending selfies and group iPhone shots.

Lord and Taylor – Going, Going, Gone

Poor, sad Lord & Taylor. Its Fifth Avenue windows are blaring the fact it is going out of business. This will no doubt appeal to the holiday shopper looking for deals; the main floor looks like a giant warehouse sale once you move past the beauty counters. No amount of decorative cheer is going to disguise the fact that this brand ran itself into the ground by not paying attention to what consumers want in a retail experience. In the end, Lord & Taylor stood for nothing – no personality, no perspective, no reason to visit. Holiday windows proclaiming 30% off may be the most honest holiday message for a dysfunctional retail industry in its existential race to the bottom.

Macy\’s – Miracle on 34th Street

The clever people at Macy\’s latched onto the women\’s movement featuring Sunny, the can-do snow-space cadette who is buzzing around solving problems. The six Herald Square windows present a narrative of Sunny and her white fox pal saving Santa\’s sleigh, all against the backdrop of Star Wars-worthy digital special effects. It is the perfect fusion of the art and science of narrative. There\’s lots of interactivity with play-me buttons and joysticks for the kids. It is a virtuoso job of storytelling mixed with all the visual tricks and cues expected by Gen Z. Interior Macy\’s wins the wonder and awe award for 2018, hands down. It definitely helps to have soaring ceilings and a majestic interior space. Customers bump into each other looking upward, taking selfies and iPhone shots of the sentimental, breathtaking display of a forest canopy of evergreen boughs, crystal balls and dazzling white lights. Vignettes placed in open spherical ornaments float overhead, the columns are transformed into glittery tree trunks complete with moving squirrels and owls and vitrines showcase mini statues of the 1924 Thanksgiving Parade balloon favorites Harold the fireman and policeman and those charming elves. Huge digital flat screens tell romantic beauty and fragrance stories and thematic floor displays mix and match product à la STORY – it is truly wonder, awe and temptation for children of all ages. Macy\’s will definitely get you out of the house, off the screens, away from the phone and into the land of \”believe in the wonder of giving\” – materialistically and otherwise. This is the real-deal theatrical environment that brings the giving spirit alive – and Amazon hasn\’t got a prayer to be able to provide this level of experience. Macy\’s does a public service by instilling goodwill, trust and a sense of community for families and customers from around the world. It is the only retailer smart enough to tap into what the whole holiday experience is supposed to be about: unlocking the imagination of a child.

In one minute and 25 seconds, Alibaba scored shock and awe sales of $1 billion. Say again!!? Not only that, sales exceeded $10 billion in five minutes and 21 seconds faster than last year. Then they went on to finish the day selling a whopping $30.8 billion, more than Macy\’s does in an entire year. The number of delivery orders surpassed a billion. This was its 10th annual Singles\’ Day, (so called because it\’s on 11.11). It set an eye-popping historic record, up from its previous record of $25.3 billion in 2017. While this represented a nearly 27 percent increase, it was smaller than the 39 percent year-on-year growth recorded in 2017.

Unbelievable? Yes, it is. That old line, \”If selling a billion dollars\’ worth of stuff in one minute sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.\” This was confirmed in a conversation I had with my friend, FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology) Professor Vincent Quan, who enlightened me about something I was unaware of. At the risk of appearing naïve to my readers, his tutorial also inspired me to write this article with his contributions to inform readers of The Robin Report who also may be as unaware of the reality behind the Alibaba Singles\’ Day process as I was.

First, Quan establishes the context. He clarifies GMV and Alibaba\’s two major platforms contributing to Singles\’ Day and how its model differs from Amazon. He reminds me that \”Alibaba is an e-commerce platform that connects buyers and sellers on two sites. T-Mall is the platform connecting major brands both domestic and international with consumers. Taobao is the platform connecting independent sellers with consumers. Thus, the \’sales\’ reflected on Singles\’ Day is deemed Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV). Amazon operates as a retailer and an intermediary on one platform but owns and sells much of its inventory directly to consumers. While Amazon does generate GMV sales on its site, the majority of items sold generates actual revenue since the seller is Amazon itself.\”

Okay, so what\’s the \”dirty little secret?\” Quan informs me that \”On November 1 (10 days prior to Singles\’ Day) Alibaba allows consumers to preview the merchandise offered for sale. This is the pre-sale period. The business model for Alibaba is dissimilar to Amazon in that Alibaba allows consumers to \’secure\’ their intended purchases in their shopping carts prior to Singles\’ Day (more on this shortly). Amazon requires consumers to purchase merchandise placed in their carts usually within several minutes during their promotional events else the item goes back into the inventory.\”

And while Alibaba does not intend this pre-sale to be a secret (I call it that just to be provocative), in the world of business competitors and finance, it\’s convenient to be a bit misleading to gin up the numbers. It\’s always about the numbers, right? A billion dollars in one minute? And everybody goes nuts!

Of course, the major players in the U.S. already know about Jack Ma\’s enthusiasm to hype his business. Hey, nobody does price promoting gimmicks better than our own home-grown retailers. And guess what? Consumers could care less about the gimmick as long as they believe they\’re getting the best deal ever.

Quan explains the consumer benefits (most important) and the benefit for Alibaba. \”During the period between November 1 and 11, consumers accumulate items in their shopping carts. For many brands, there is a non-refundable deposit required to secure the item. The deposit improves the conversion rate such that consumers are reluctant to lose their deposits. On the vendor side, pre-sale orders are accumulated so that full demand visibility is provided. Such visibility allows the vendor to adjust the level of supply at the SKU level and in some instances, secure additional inventory through the supply chain if an item sells out quickly. In other instances, vendors may add additional or similar items to the event based on early demand. On the other hand, having a highly sought item sell out within seconds creates a marketing buzz for the brand and a feeding frenzy so that buyers don\’t want to miss out next time.

\”For the consumer, there are several incentives to shop during the 11.11 event. First and foremost, items are offered at lower prices from their original retail, thus incentivizing consumers to buy. There are also other ways to incentivize consumers. For the recent event, Alibaba offered a \’spend 400 CNY (Chinese currency) and receive a 50 CNY discount\’ on items purchased. The promotion kicked in for every 400 CNY spent so that a consumer spending between 800-1199 CNY received a total discount of 100 CNY and so on. Once the purchase reached the 1200 CNY threshold an additional 50 CNY discount would apply. The Alibaba discount applied to all combined purchases on T-Mall regardless of brand.

\”Brands can also influence consumers to purchase their brands exclusively by offering a \’brand only discount\’ based on 400 CNY increments. In this example, a consumer purchasing an item originally priced at 569 CNY for the discounted price of 512 CNY would receive an additional 30 CNY price reduction. In our example below the math would work like this.\”

What\’s the bottom line here? By strategically offering a 10-day pre-sale shopping period to the Singles\’ Day event, both Alibaba and the brands sold through the T-Mall store benefit, along with consumers. E-tailers listen up – this is the playbook you might want to adopt to reap what you sow!

The airport in Doha, Qatar is packed at midnight. The arrivals hall has a huge yellow teddy bear in the center. Duty free stores are full and the line at the currency exchange office is endless. The human landscape is breathtakingly diverse. Tattooed, scantly-clad Euro-trash backpackers, pious Muslim families with multiple chador covered wives, Asian tourists and dazed aging business types like yours truly. Call it the result of geographic fate, but Doha, like Dubai is one the transfer capitals of the global travel industry and the airport functions 24/7. Many travelers will only see the inside of the transit terminal and never taste the dry hot air outside. It is an accidental destination for modestly-priced ticket passengers on night flight transfers from Hong Kong to London or Kuala Lumpur to Dublin. An adventurous few will leave the terminal for a visit to Doha, a surreal Star Wars experience.

Qatar is a flat, barren thumb that sticks out into the Persian Gulf. The sole UNESCO Heritage site is Al Zubara Fort, a small, square mud and coral fort constructed in 1938 to protect a neighboring pearl diving village. However authentic, it seems like something from a French Foreign Legion film set of the 1940s. Qatar has beaches, but calling it a resort doesn’t make it one, and in a deeply Muslim country modesty rules. The men can wear speedos, but the women are completely covered. There are two reasons to come to Qatar. One is to shop and the other is access to modestly priced 21st-century health care. It is a powerful and heady pairing.

For Muslim families Doha is a comfortable place in spite of 114-degree daytime temperatures. Unlike Europe, much less North America, Muslims fit in here. Some come with their servants, many arrive in their extended family with three generations traveling together. Every shopping venue has prayer rooms and the Souq Waqif, the old market, has more than one mosque adjacent. There is a formal politeness to each verbal interchange and the range of ethnic dress styles doesn’t raise an eyebrow. As new money is created in the Muslim world driven by gas, oil and trade –- the choice of where to spend it is in transition. Harrods, Selfridge’s, Galleries Lafayette and Bon Marche now have competition with the Middle East. Dubai, Doha and Bangkok are seen as more comfortable, understanding and tolerant for Muslim shoppers. Even Singapore is losing out, perceived as too Western.

Doha is another reminder that global wealth has completely lost its peaches-and- cream complexion. Qatar may be at odds with its neighbors, Saudi Arabia to the west and Dubai to the south, but the main proposition the country offers beyond its geographic location is safety. There is no crime. The range of shopping choices is broad. At one end of the spectrum are the luxury malls: think Gucci and Maserati. There is a voracious appetite for luxe accessories like watches, jewelry, mobile and phone cases plus luxury automobiles. The more mainstream Festival City shopping center houses Marks and Spenser, Adidas and Victoria’s Secret. There is even a Border’s bookstore. And yes, there are customers paying with plastic, but the currency of choice is still cash.

The Souq Waqif is the traditional market offering gold, handicrafts, ethnic apparel and even stores specializing in veils and face masks. It is 21st century retail in a 19th-century setting. Some corridors are air-conditioned, others have a dusty closeness that lingers in your lungs. There are sword makers, taxidermists and Rolex watch stores. My favorite was the Falcon Souq where you can buy raptors and their hunting accessories. It might be the oldest operating pet complex in the world. The birds come from bird farms around the world and sell for thousands of dollars. It is retail entertainment with a patina of Disney. The restaurants are good, not inexpensive and non-alcoholic. Qatar on paper is the richest country in the world based on average household income. And yet at the Souq, you can rent a man with a wheelbarrow that trails behind you carrying all of your bags.

We talk about shopping tourism and yet the New York Nordstrom is just more of the same in a different package. Want to truly get safely lost in consumption? Come to Doha. The cutting-edge of modern shopping is in places where money is new and young. The airport puts JFK to shame. The restrooms are spotless, the service professional. The roads are smooth and new. The taxi meters are connected to electronic monitoring systems and chirp when driver goes over the speed limit. You know you are in exotica when you go home with a hooded falcon.

On a recent afternoon, I saw two twenty-something women photographing vegetables at the bustling Whole Foods store on Sixth Avenue and 42nd Street in New York City. After taking several shots of organic beets and swiss chard in various arrangements, they posted the images on Instagram, giggling as the “likes” and “comments” began to arrive almost instantaneously. Were they food bloggers, I wondered? No, as it turns out, these young ladies were just highly engaged consumers going about their day.

Food has always been a social differentiator. For hundreds of years restaurants have been indicators of social status. Food shopping, preparation and consumption are more experiential than ever, and for young consumers, they are a manifestation of who you are, or at least how you want to be perceived, in person or on social media. The millennial generation has become larger than the baby boomer population, commanding a growing share of the estimated $1 trillion in annual grocery spending. Millennials and their unique attitudes toward food shopping have drawn the attention of grocery retailers. More and more, millennials want their food choices to fit into the ideal image they strive to portray—one that shows their social consciousness, sense of community, concern for health and wellness, and demand for quality and value. You are what you eat, and you’re as smart and amazing as your grocery shopping habits.

Convenience Is King

The millennial food experience cannot come at the expense of convenience, however. Millennials have long been known for their demand for ease and value, embracing online shopping and price transparency, forcing the food retail industry to address the technological advances that have become integrated into day-to-day life. Technology has enabled this generation to be independent, yet simultaneously able to understand the value of products. With the internet at their fingertips, millennials pride themselves with being “in the know” with what fair prices are, as well as whether they are getting the highest quality products. To the dismay of many consumer product companies, millennials will not clip coupons from the Sunday paper, and they also no longer want to pay the high prices charged by the old Whole Foods. Amazon will have to change Whole Foods’ ways.

Stocking up on basics can be difficult for the growing number of urban folks without a car, and inconvenient via taxi, Uber or Lyft, causing many to resort to online grocery shopping at Instacart (a well-developed app system that allows for grocery orders to local stores from the phone), Jet or Amazon Pantry. Arielle J., a 23-year-old recent college graduate living in Chicago, said, “I order online for things like cereals, soups, beans, pasta sauce…essentially any item that is bulky or heavy and can last on my shelf. I simply can’t carry that many grocery bags at once to my apartment, and after calculating the cost, getting an Uber would cost more than using one of these services.” Arielle said she often shares via Twitter or Snapchat news of her online orders with her network, recommending items that she particularly liked.

A recent Goldman Sachs report, “Supermarket Shift,” estimates that online purchases currently total 3 percent of grocery spending, but will grow to an estimated 20 percent by 2027, or over $250 billion in annual spend. The convenience of online grocery shopping is hard to beat, but with many different options available to consumers, food retail companies are still vying for the top spot. Amazon (AMZN) has gained traction with Amazon Pantry and Amazon Fresh, but other companies are still contenders. Ahold Delhaize (AMS), which owns Peapod, said it plans to double its e-commerce sales by 2020 from existing sales of 2.3 billion Euros ($3 billion) in 2016. Peapod sales grew more than 25 percent in New York in 2016. As it increases accessibility of its service beyond the current level of 40-45 percent, it has tremendous opportunity to grow. Kroger (KR), the largest U.S. grocery chain, offers online ordering through its Clicklist service at more than a third of its 2,800 U.S. stores, and plans to expand its delivery arrangement with Uber and others.

Experiential Brick and Mortar

To cultivate a food image worthy of social media, many millennials have also changed their in-store shopping habits. “Where I buy my groceries can often get just as much attention as where I go out to eat,” said Emily O., a 26-year-old law student who shops primarily at the Wegman’s and Trader Joe’s near her town home in central Virginia. “People look at the logo on your shopping bags and judge you. There’s this social pressure to buy food that has all-natural ingredients but is also cost-effective.”

Whole Foods Market (WFM) and Trader Joe’s have taken a creative approach to grocery retailing, and both recognized early on the value of stressing high-quality, health-consciousness and convenience. These retailers want to make grocery shopping an enjoyable and memorable experience rather than a chore, and the chains’ recognition of the desires and needs of millennials have made them favorites among young shoppers.

Trader Joe’s, the 50-year-old California-based retailer privately owned by the German family trust that also has a controlling stake in one of the Aldi divisions, has catered to many different demographic groups, but seems to be resonating particularly well with millennials for a variety of reasons. Stores are small with super-friendly staffs, giving the store a personal, specialty feel and “global” vibe, catering to a so-called the “bourgeois bohemian” consumer, yet also attracting the rich and famous, with frequent celebrity sightings. About 80 percent of its products are private label. Trader Joe’s has taken a new approach to millennial shoppers: understanding the desire for healthy, homemade meals without cooking from scratch. Their microwavable meals are far from Easy Mac. Instead, they are items like “Sweet Potato Gnocchi,” “Lamb Koftas,” and “Vegan Tikka Masala.”

“I love going to Trader Joe’s for my grocery shopping trip,” said Tyler G., a 24-year-old Californian (and self-proclaimed foodie) working at a Fortune 500 technology company raved. “I can go in there and buy really fresh bread, cheeses, meats, vegetables and packaged nuts and snack foods. For weekend meals at home with friends, I like to cook, and find I can add fresh food to amplify their premade items, which are of really amazing quality.” The only downside to Trader Joe’s, according to Tyler, is that it has not yet entered the e-commerce space.

Whole Foods, founded in 1980, takes a different approach to millennials, but boasts similar success. Although its acquisition by Amazon has sparked changes in the company, its underlying mission remains the same: to make responsible decisions regarding the community and the environment. “If it hadn’t been for Whole Foods, I don’t know what I would have eaten during my eight months of week-long out-of-town business trips,” remarked Ella, a 29-year-old NY-based management consultant. For a recent project, Ella spent Monday through Thursday at her client’s medium-sized city. On a food per diem, with few affordable healthy restaurant options, she would stop at Whole Foods each evening to pick up the dinner she’d later eat in her hotel room. “The premade food is delicious and easy, and fruit, yogurt and snacks healthy and fresh.” After discovering a particularly tasty combination at the salad bar, she’d share her find with friends and family on Facebook.

Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods demonstrates the company’s belief in the various ways technology can integrate online and offline, an indicator that food retailing is ripe for big changes. The acquisition will no doubt create synergies between Whole Foods, Amazon Fresh, Prime now and other business, as well as new store formats.

Meal Kits: Convenience and Experience Without Waste

Food delivery services such as Seamless and Uber Eats have become second nature for young consumers used to having the anything they want at their fingertips. But having prepared food robs one of the skill development (and bragging rights) surrounding the cooking experience. Enter the meal kit. These products epitomize “cooking made easy,” or having ingredients in the right quantities shipped to your home along with directions to prepare delicious, interested, beautiful dishes specially selected for you.

A recent study by market research firm Fluent revealed that almost a quarter of millennials have subscribed to a meal-kit service at some point, compared to 15 percent of the typical grocery shopper. Hello Fresh and Blue Apron are among the leading companies in this space, appealing to the millennial need for convenience and keeping up with the latest health and food trends.

Meal kits have gotten the attention of major supermarket chains. Albertsons (ABS) recently purchased New-York-based “Plated,” the first acquisition of a prepared-meals company by a major grocery player. Plated allows customers to buy meals costing $10-$12 meals such as chicken with roasted potatoes, or feta-stuffed lamb burgers for delivery or pickup at Albertsons stores.

However, the success of the category is by no means guaranteed. Arielle J. complains that high cost was the main reason she cancelled Hello Fresh after the first few promotional orders. The other deterrent was far more unexpected: Two boxes were stolen from her front porch. In busy cities, packages clearly labeled as food often disappear after delivery from buildings without doormen, prompting Amazon to create its new in-house delivery service Amazon Key.

Since going public in June, Blue Apron (APRN) has lost more than half its value, one of the biggest valuation declines for an IPO in 2017, causing it to recently announce it was replacing its CEO. “Blue Apron doesn’t offer enough choice,” complained Liz O., a 25-year-old writer from Westchester County, New York. “They charge $10 per person per meal for the standard two-person plan, which comes with three recipes (six total meals) per week. Much of the preparation work is left to the customers. With the rise of Pinterest, Tasty, and other recipe websites at your fingertips, most of my friends and I are using Blue Apron several times to develop an interest in cooking, then flying solo.”

Blue Apron also fails to deliver much convenience or speed up the cooking process, except for saving time figuring out which recipes to choose or which ingredients to buy. However, millennials love choice—the internet has made them accustomed to finding anything they want at any point. Wouldn’t that be easier than designated recipes from Blue Apron?

Sometimes You Don’t Want Fancy

Not all grocery stores need to be trendy and fun to appeal to millennials, however. In fact, for produce and buying items in bulk, “no frill” stores are a breath of fresh air for consumers, providing reliable items for rock-bottom prices. Aldi and Lidl, whose growth strategies have brought them to the U.S. from their home country Germany, have excelled at selling a narrow assortment of curated, well-presented private label product. Another young company, Boxed, offers roughly 1,500 items that shoppers can order in bulk (think Costco without the membership fee), thereby saving money.

Buying Local

Increasingly, social media is dominated by images of farmers’ markets and local food shopping. Buying food and beverage grown, prepared and packed locally is viewed by millennials as a way to support small businesses and show a concern for community. It also cultivates an image of embracing natural foods and eschewing pesticides and artificial growth hormones. Farmer’s and other small independent local markets are a social activity that embraces the two most important aspects of buying groceries for millennials: seamless integration into their online persona, and a demonstration of health-conscious and price-conscious tendencies. They can also be a form of entertainment, an event to attend on the weekends or holidays, and then post about it on Facebook.

The Future of Food Retailing

Many in the grocery business feel that the industry is poised for disruption that it hasn’t seen since A&P and other supermarkets began to upend local mom-and-pop grocers in the 1930s. The rapid change occurring in the food retail space, driven by the growing purchasing power of unpredictable millennials and the explosion of new technology, has caused many traditional grocery retailers and other companies to take huge gambles to position itself for the future.

Though the major beneficiary of these changes, according to Goldman Sachs, will be Amazon, 15-20 percent of whose net sales it expected to come from grocery in 10 years, they will not be the only success story. There is no doubt tremendous opportunity for new concepts that deliver not only convenience and price, but also elevated experience, quality and social currency to a rapidly evolving consumer population.

Money isn\’t easy to come by, especially when you\’re young.

Thus, it’s common for people in early adulthood to be frugal. When there’s little money to spend, it’s necessary to spend wisely. But today’s young adult—the millennials, or Gen Y—have been forced to behave in exceptionally frugal ways. Having come of age in the great recession, often saddled with high levels of student loan debt, and witness to the disappearance of their elders’ savings, millennials are not an acquisitive bunch. Unlike when the two generations that preceded them (boomers and Gen Xers) were at a comparable age, millennials are extremely tight with a buck.

That, understandably, has caused consternation among retailers—many of which are also struggling to find their footing in the post-recession era. But there is some good news for companies looking to pry a few dollars out of today’s young adults: Millennials aren’t always thrifty. A look at data from The NPD Group’s Checkout Tracking℠ service shows that members of Gen Y do tend to spend more when certain conditions are met.

• Millennials shop more frequently at brick-and-mortar, but they spend more money when shopping online.
• Millennials spend more than twice as much per receipt when shopping online in three categories: clothing, electronics, and home/kitchen.

What’s interesting is that these two spending patterns appear to grow more pronounced as today’s young adults grow older. In other words, millennials have settled into these patterns. This isn’t a trend, it’s the new normal. And retailers are going to have to adapt. “Millennials are learning to do more with less. And spending has become an art form. Understanding what is most likely to influence that spend is critical for success today,” according to Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst for The NPD Group.

Three factors seem to drive millennials’ higher online spends:

• Minimum order requirements for free shipping.
• The ease of comparing prices for higher-ticket items online.
• Easy return policies for items that often require returns, i.e., clothing.

And it doesn’t take a retail genius to see that the overarching theme of those three factors is convenience. As noted in the January issue of The Robin Report, (www.therobinreport.com/asking-why-gen-y-shops-the-way-it-does), millennials place great value on convenience. And given their immersion in the always-on world of mobile, they fully expect retailers to make the shopping experience an easy one.

For example, millennials skew very heavily to buying in specialty stores as opposed to department stores. And the specialty stores that do best with millennials online are those that have targeted them with online/mobile strategies, A specialty store with a well-developed mobile strategy gives Gen Y shoppers what they crave: the ability to find what they want at a price they can handle in a hassle-free manner. Find what you want online. Dash into the store and try it on if need be. Buy it there. Or buy it from your phone.

For example, Asos, the online fashion retailer that offers free shipping for purchases greater than $40, wins a full percent of the online apparel spend of 18 to 24-year olds. By comparison, Banana Republic and LOFT get just 2 percent, while Anthropologie and Bloomingdales get only 1 percent.The key lesson here for retailers is clear: if you want a piece of millennials’ limited wallet, you better make it very easy for young adult consumers to do business with you.

Many retailers have spent hours worrying about millennials. And with good reason. The generation, also known as Gen Y, has exhibited some distinctly different shopping patterns from earlier cohorts of the same age. Looking at the data, there is a reason to be less nervous about the spending patterns of these next-generation shoppers.

New data shows that younger millennials (those aged 18-24) increased their spending by 29 percent in the 12-month period ending in June 2016, compared with people in that group in the year ending June 2015. Interestingly, that spending jump is particularly pronounced in health and beauty, home improvement and grocery. This isn’t a one off. People who were in the 18 to 24 age group in the year ending June 2015 spent 25 percent more than did 18- to 24-year olds in 2014.

So What’s Going On?

It turns out that millennials are every bit as easy to understand as Gen X or the boomers, as long as you look in the right places and ask the right questions. Look at their shopping receipts. And ask, as simple as it may sound, “why would they buy from me?”

Earlier this year we shared data from our Checkout Tracking℠ service with researchers from the Jay H. Baker Retailing Center at the Wharton School of The University of Pennsylvania. Checkout Tracking data is culled from millions of receipts that consumers send to us. Those receipts yield detailed, itemized data about individual consumers from many stores, across all retail segments, covering both online and brick and mortar.

We found that while life events often drive purchases (i.e., when someone has a baby), two surprising factors determine why a millennial chooses one retail location over another:

1. Level of convenience
2. Generational appropriateness of the experience

How Easy Was That?

So let’s look at the first motivation: convenience.

Millennials tend to buy in specialty stores, not department stores. The online specialty stores, that attract them the most are those that targeted this age group with online/mobile strategies. Two successful brands are Asos and Victoria’s Secret. What’s their strategy? Speed and convenience.

Millennials are famously attached to their mobile devices. So a specialty store with a well-developed mobile strategy offers them both speed and ease. Find what you want online. Dash into the store and try it on, if need be. Buy it there. Or buy it from your phone.

Department stores, with floor plans that welcome browsing, aren’t in the speed business. They may offer tremendously varied inventory. They may win on price or location, or both. But no one thinks of department store shopping as rapid.

Need Another Example?

Everyone visits a convenience store from time to time. Boomers, for example, stop at c-stores for gasoline. Millennials buy food there—a lot of it. Plus gift cards. Compared with other shoppers, millennials spend a relatively higher share of their convenience-store budget on gift cards as well as grocery items and housewares. This outsized purchasing of gift cards is especially pronounced among older millennials, who also spend a significantly larger share of their mass merchant expenses on gift cards than we’ve seen with other generations. Why? Speed and convenience. As pragmatic as it is, can you think of a meal that is faster than something from a c-store? Can you think of a gift that is faster and easier to find than a gift card?

Will I Remember This?

Now let’s consider the second factor: a generationally appropriate experience.

Millennials are noted for their embrace of experiential retail. It’s easy to misunderstand what that actually means. Gen Y does, in fact, gravitate toward purchases that are memorable. A good meal with friends is generally held in higher regard by millennials than a new pair of pants, no matter how wonderful the pants might be.

In truth, all consumers in all generations have an interest in experiential retail. The differences are in what each demographic finds memorable and exciting. For example, boomers over-index for QVC. There’s something about that shopping experience that resonates with them. QVC managed to marry shopping to the “revolutionary” leisure-based activity for boomers when they were younger: watching cable television.

Millennials, on the other hand, under-index for QVC. Television is still part of their life, but young adults have cut the cord. A live sale on live TV simply doesn’t fit their lifestyle. On the other hand, millennials over-index for apps that offer ease, convenience and fun shopping experiences (e.g., Uber, Seamless, GrubHub, Target and Etsy).

Have They Changed? Or Did Retail Change?

What is driving a rise in younger millennials’ willingness to spend on retail two years in a row? One likely explanation, and perhaps the likeliest explanation, is that retailers have begun to understand what millennials want, and provide it. Whether it’s specialty stores with an assortment aimed at an eco-, price- and fashion-conscious consumer; a department store that has decided to bring specialty stores inside the building; apps that make shopping easier; policies that make returns free; or customer-service departments that are unified across both brick and mortar and online, the retail industry is, at last, starting to get it right with young adults.

It’s a silly game to keep tracking Black Friday and Cyber Monday.  Just as same-store sales became a meaningless measure of performance once e-commerce took off, Black Friday and Cyber Monday became irrelevant when retailers began trying to outdo each other by starting both events earlier and earlier with deeper promotions.  Amazon launched its 2016 Black Friday campaign on November 1st to run through December 22nd.  Furthermore, most senior retail executives I talk to cynically admit that Black Friday is an everyday event, all year long.  It’s like being in Marine Corps boot camp when the drill instructor shouts out “… every day is a holiday and every meal is a banquet in the Marine Corps.” Over time, one begins to believe it.

The concepts of Black Friday and Cyber Monday are now owned by consumers as opposed to being benchmark days for retailers to measure against the previous year and to project Holiday shopping energy.  Just as the Super Bowl is an iconic American event, so too are these whacko consumption events. But they do provide the financial and retail analysts as well as the media with provocative headlines and content. But honestly, it’s kind of like following a marathon dog race.

Another fly in the ointment making the credibility of the consumption numbers suspect is the multitude of sources tracking sales, traffic and performance metrics in different sectors.  Who do you believe when one source says online sales are soaring, yet another says they’re just up over last year, but down significantly from years past? Or even worse, store and mall traffic is reported to be down from one source, but up from another.  Or, promotions started earlier and deeper from one source, but they are aligned with inventory from another.  And so on. And so on. Let’s get rid of all these reports that end up as surface noise and are nothing more than confusing.

So if I’m the CEO of a major retailer, do I even care about all of this confusing and contradictory cacophony?  On a macro industry level, maybe, but it’s like tossing grass in the air to see which way the wind is blowing.  The only numbers that really matter are the metrics on a specific store business, and CEOs have to care intensely about how their numbers are stacking up against last year and if Holiday strategies are succeeding.  And these measures aren’t speculative or headline fodder. They are real, daily data based on real transactions and traffic metrics.

So, if you find yourself at a loss for conversation over a luncheon with a colleague, or if you’re one of the soothsayers in the race to have projected the closest Holiday revenue growth, then by all means, yada yada yada on the numbers.

If you want to appear intelligent and maintain your sanity, then tune it all out.

Westfield World Trade Center had its soft opening last week; it’s the latest masterpiece of rebirth of lower Manhattan since the 9/11 tragedy. It has been a painful 15 years of unrequited completion filled with heart-wrenching conflicts. For the many New Yorkers who lived downtown and had a direct connection to the trauma, they still want life to return to normal. They view the fact that Ground Zero has turned into a tourist attraction as a macabre honor for a mass murder site. The ongoing fascination with the tragedy frightens their children and discolors their day-to-day lives.

Downtown planners and even the 9/11 Memorial organizers have been caught by surprise by the high level of interest in the site and the profile of visitors, which skews heavily toward the offshore tourist rather than domestic visitors. To add to the complexity of a creating a monument of institutionalized memory is the emotional legacy of the friends and families of the people that lost their lives in the tragedy. For them, a public memorial site and official annual remembrance service are the least the city can do to honor all those who passed.

For so many of us who watched in horror as 9/11 unfolded, and lived with the resulting mess with its chaos and the unforgettable smell, the 15-year rebirth of lower Manhattan has been painfully slow.

For the people who live and work downtown, the 18-month disruption of access to public transportation during the construction of the new hub has been punishing. For those commuters on the West Side IRT and PATH to New Jersey, it has been difficult and slow.

A Downtown Story

For better or worse, Lower Manhattan has changed. What used to be one of the densest, packed places in North America during the work week and a wasteland at night and on weekends has moved in reverse and become one the fastest growing residential communities in New York City. Aging Class-B office buildings have been transformed into luxury high-rise living. Battery Park City, largely built on landfill, is a testament to a progressive modern urban planning effort. It is changing the basic gravity of New York City, making the tip of the island habitable with a beautifully landscaped sanctuary.

Too Monumental a Mall?

Why is it that many of us have reservations about the new World Trade Center mall? It may be that it is trying to be too many things to too many people at same time; transportation hub, monument and mall. By my count over a two-day observation period, less than one person in 20 moved through the mall carrying a shopping bag. While the public concourses, Apple store and Eataly were packed, everything else was empty. Is the retail portion of the mall out of sync with its market?

Downtown has three distinctly different constituents: the people who have chosen to live there; the people who work there, and the tourists and visitors who come to pay homage. All three have distinct needs.

Residents

Battery Park and the new Financial District luxury housing residences may be the greatest concentration of digitally literate consumers outside Google’s headquarters. Most of them are tied to the market and work the brutal hours that financial services demands. Are they going to the mall to buy their Tumi luggage? Probably not. These residents tend to buy their luxuries online or on vacation. What they could use is a good Super Target where they can get dishwasher soap at 11:00 PM. The Drybar in the Barfield Center, the shopping mall at Battery Park City which is connected to Westfield via an underground concourse, seems to be doing a land office business. We are reminded that convenience is the driving force in modern shopping. The residential community as a reflection of the financial markets is both affluent and ethnically mixed. Now I’m not suggesting the Westfield Mall lacks a sari store, but the retail tenant mix is so high-end white bread that it needs some global spice. Westfield is a progressive operator of malls; San Francisco Centre and Garden State Plaza are my personal favorites. We’d like them to get this one right. The most important customers for Westfield World Trade Center are the locals.

The Workers

When I did my first research work on Financial District retail in the 1970s and ‘80s, part of what we documented is how hour-by-hour so much of retail is driven by the opening and closing bells of the Stock Exchange. There was a painful need to allocate space for additional registers in retail stores so that the opening, rushed lunch and the closing bell traffic could be accommodated. Stand at the corner of “Wall Street and Vine” and you can pick out the workers from the tourists just by the tempo of their walking speeds. The clock that ticks inside a customer’s head is very loud south of Chambers Street. To an outside eye, correlating the accumulated wealth of the financial community and a potential appetite for luxury goods would seem to be obvious. And while the few high-end restaurants do well, the prevailing attitude is not about playing where you work. At the end of a long, tough working day, the impulse is to go home. Can Westfield change that? The integration of shopping and transportation is a trend everywhere, but Gucci bags and the PATH Train? Is that a winning formula?

The Visitors

New York has always been strong in tourism and many parts of the city thrive on that traffic: Madison Avenue, Museum Mile, Times Square. Downtown has its historical attraction based on the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and Battery Park. The esplanade along the Hudson River is as close to the Seine’s Left Bank as we’ve got. On an early summer evening, the parade of runners and bicyclists is impressive. New York is just discovering the Hudson River as an attraction rather than the remnants of an aging port. Up and down the banks of the Hudson are new high-rise residential buildings and clusters of outdoor restaurants and shops. The High Line has been for New York City planners a shockingly pleasant surprise and the success of the new Whitney Downtown has added to the shift of New York City’s balance from Up and East to Down and West.

Making Mall History

Ground Zero, however, has become a pilgrimage site. The monument and infrastructure services have been unprepared for the reverent, curious and yet clueless horde of visitors. Until this summer, the epicenter was still a big hole and construction site. The curious crowds circled the site and left puzzled.

Today, it is better. More buildings have opened, you can even get to the observatory to view the outside of the memorial. And you can go to the mall. The pathway from the Westfield Center is a feast of massive digital images. Stationed along the way are Westfield Guides with iPads in hand ready to help. Yet the building structure overwhelms the retail. For the first-time visitor, what you see is soaring space and endless white marble. Imagine the Lincoln or Jefferson Memorial in Washington, only bordered along the perimeter by discrete, luxury retail.

Will this imposing interior design encourage visitors to shop?

My answer is probably not. Tourists are far away from their hotels in the middle of a day of sightseeing. Do they want to spend the rest of their day hauling bags around? Luxury retail works when a shopper arrives with the express purpose of shopping: it doesn’t happen by accident. Will Westfield World Trade Center become a tourist shopping destination? We can easily ask the same question of the Hudson Yards development.

The visitor arrives, takes a whole bunch of selfies, is desperate for a place to sit down, have a coffee and take it all in. Transforming that visitor into a shopper will be the key challenge.

To be fair, Westfield WTC is not yet complete. It is architecturally breathtaking, but the retail strategy needs to be examined over time to see if it works. We need to reserve judgment on the tenant mix for now as well. I am constantly reminded that in retail we have to be very careful about who the hero is. If we are all looking up at the soaring architectural wonder of a mall, we are not looking at each other. And luxury shopping has always been a social sport, admiring and focusing on each other, not the environs.