Napoleon, Stonewall Jackson, Hannibal. Masters of the flanking manouevre. When does one flank? Often it’s a suitable strategy if one has fewer yet more mobile troops- in the Business world, the analogy might be having the humility, money & flexibility to adjust/ change positions. Face it- you admit there are chunks of consumers/ shopping occasions [...]

This week I made my students to back up a step to see the big picture- macro competitive strategies. As a ‘list guy’ I’m a tad obsessed with categorizing. Following is my list of the Sun Tzu / Von Clausewitz war strategies that best apply to business competitive methods: Hunker Down & Defend/Enhance the core: [...]

You may have sen recent Canadian Tire Corp (CTC) ads that proudly remind us how they’ve been part of Canadian consumers’ lives for generations. The new ads also allude to some of their past ads (incl. an icon ad: sentimental hard-working farmer brings home a hard-won bike for a surprised, appreciative son). Canadian Tire is [...]

HP recently announced a layoff of 27,000. No surprise at all. Years ago I argued that they should shift resources from building PC’s  to IT services, cloud computing, etc, as IBM and then Xerox did. HP’s then-CEO (they had a few, due in part to conflict between Board & Exec suite!) opted instead to bet [...]

Opened my newspaper today- out fell some Danier ’50% Off’ fliers. Many of you know Danier specializes in genuine leather attire (the regular kind, not the kinky kind). Of course, they have seasonal clearance sales every year, but what’s notable this time is: Danier usually has a 25% Off or 33% Off sale first, then [...]

3 big Japanese electronics firms- Sharp, Sony & Panasonic- all just posted dreadful losses. All had undergone big strategic changes that failed to yield positive results (yet). Funny thing was – each of the 3 took a different path to change. But they DID make changes. Sharp embraced Vertical Integration & Scale; they built their [...]

Two seemingly unrelated news stories this week in Canadian retail: 1. Sobeys, the 2nd largest grocer after Loblaws, has contracted to supply groceries to Target; and 2. Canadian Tire enters the ‘services’ market. What on earth could link those two events? The upcoming (2013) entry of Target. Let’s recap a few of the many recent [...]

Having lived & worked on both sides of the border, it’s neat to be based in Canada, as U.S. retail power Target heads this way. A stellar success amidst a fading group of ‘Mass Merchandisers’, Target is terrific at what it does- despite a world that’s going against mass marketing -a la ‘Long Tail’. Target is [...]