We’re all looking for good news. Every vendor and retail I speak to asks me to report something positive. If you’ve got some good news, I tell them, I would love to report it. But most have news that is merely hopeful if it isn’t downright bad. Not that hopeful news isn’t a hopeful sign.

The prevailing attitude in retail seems to be that consumers are...

When I wrote about Topman, shaming them for being in the basement, and praising Uniqlo for putting menswear on the second floor, someone asked, “Who cares what floor menswear is on?”

My answer is that men care. The average man doesn’t shop like the average woman—we all know that. So why lay out stores as if men enjoyed searching for things, browsing, and...

My recent blog post, Listening to the Loudest Voices, may have been a bit too negative. In the post, I cited research from CARMA International, a media analysis firm, about how bloggers see big retailers.

I focused on only one side of the study—the negative retail commentary—and ignored the genuinely positive reactions some bloggers have to some of these...

Underneath three floors of Topshop, Topman is an over-priced bunker full of polyester.

“Listen,” said a disgruntled Topshop customer to the security guard at the door, “this is digusting. There’s nobody in the store. Why are you making everyone line up outside?”

This was an excellent question. I was poised at the front of that line, wondering with my...

A media research firm called CARMA International has released a survey in which they found that bloggers tend to loathe Walmart and adore Costco—not a surprise. Bloggers, they found, also tend to love Target and hate Macy’s.

CARMA monitored some 50 million blogs every day during January and February, looking for mentions of 17 different retailers. They...