Retailer Quotes & Sayings

Buy something at a retailer, and your PII (personally identifiable information) attaches the UPC to your Guest ID in the CRM (customer relations management) software, which then starts working on what you'll want next. — Christian Rudder

As a retailer, I would ask the customer, "What is it you want in life?" Whatever answer they give, I would help them to say the correct answer, or the most effective answer, for anyone - feeling good. — Wayne Dyer

In the old days we were the challenger brand competing against the big banks, but today I go round the world and I sit with governors of central banks and finance ministers and, in some cases, prime ministers. They all know Travelex. We are regarded as the establishment - the world's largest retailer of foreign currency. — Lloyd Dorfman

The most dangerous myth is the demagoguery that business can be made to pay a larger share, thus relieving the individual. Politicians preaching this are either deliberately dishonest, or economically illiterate, and either one should scare us. Business doesn't pay taxes, and who better than business to make this message known? Only people pay taxes, and people pay as consumers every tax that is assessed against a business. Begin with the food and fiber raised in the farm, to the ore drilled in a mine, to the oil and gas from out of the ground, whatever it may be
through the processing, through the manufacturing, on out to the retailer's license. If the tax cannot be included in the price of the product, no one along that line can stay in business. — Ronald Reagan

It had seemed a good idea at the time to order the furniture for her new home online from a chain retailer. — Val McDermid

I am not a retailer - I have never run a store; I have never understood the full details of how you can make a consumer satisfied. To build a company, to do deals, to motivate people: this is what I am able to do. — Stefano Pessina

Today's leading real-world retailer, Wal-Mart, uses software to power its logistics and distribution capabilities, which it has used to crush its competition. — Marc Andreessen

When I first decided to launch a clothing line, I was pregnant with my daughter Spencer-Margaret, so I looked for a retailer with values that mirrored my own growing family concerns. Kmart is a family store where value-conscious moms shop, so my partnership with Kmart seemed like a natural fit. — Jaclyn Smith

It's my job to know what's available from every retailer, catalog, website, antiques mall, and craftsperson. A good designer or decorator has to have an almost encyclopedic knowledge. — Nate Berkus

The Internet is the easiest thing to get into. To be an Internet retailer, you just get that URL. — Bill Gates

Anyone working for a big company might be skeptical that a large business, or even a strictly online business, can form the same kind of friendly, loyal relationship with customers as a local retailer. I'm saying it's already been done because I lived it. — Gary Vaynerchuk

the investment pullback came after Portland leaders determined the mega-retailer is "not a socially responsible company." Portland had about $36 million invested in Walmart, or about 2.9 percent of the city's investment portfolio. The city announced Thursday that it would be free of all remaining holdings by 2016. The move was preceded by Portland's adoption of socially responsible investment protocol in October 2013. Portland Commissioner Steve Novick has advocated ending involvement with Walmart based on the retailer's "controversial business and labor practices, — Anonymous

For years, black political leaders in New York City aligned themselves with labor unions to block the construction of a Walmart in a low-income community with persistently high unemployment. According to a Marist poll taken in 2011, 69 percent of blacks in New York would welcome a Walmart in their neighborhood. Yet these black leaders put the interests of Big Labor, which doesn't like the retailer's stance toward unions, ahead of the interests of struggling black people who could use the jobs and low-priced goods. — Jason L. Riley

I spend my time being a retailer, not an economist. — Mike Duke

I have no interest in being the biggest, the most profitable or the largest retailer. I just want The Body Shop to be the best, most breathlessly exciting company - and one that changes the way business is carried out. — Anita Roddick

It was February sixth: eight days until Valentine's Day. I was dateless, as usual, deep in the vice grip of unrequited love. It was bad enough not having a boyfriend for New Year's Eve. Now I had to cope with Valentine datelessness, feeling consummate social pressure from every retailer in America who stuck hearts and cupids in their windows by January second to rub it in. — Joan Bauer

It's a great opportunity to lower costs without sacrificing quality. If a retailer is not leveraging this capability, they are certainly missing something. — Marc Chandler

Sulphuric acid was added to vinegar for extra sharpness, chalk to milk, turpentine to gin. Arsenite of copper was used to make vegetables greener or to make jellies glisten. Lead chromate gave bakery products a golden glow and brought radiance to mustard. Lead acetate was added to drinks as a sweetener, and red lead somehow made Gloucester cheese lovelier to behold, if not safer to eat. There was hardly a foodstuff, it seems, that couldn't be improved or made more economical to the retailer through a little deceptive manipulation. — Bill Bryson

Unlike traditional retailers, Amazon boasted what was called a negative operating cycle. Customers paid with their credit cards when their books shipped but Amazon settled its accounts with the book distributors only every few months. With every sale, Amazon put more cash in the bank, giving it a steady stream of capital to fund its operations and expansion.14 The company could also lay claim to a uniquely high return on invested capital. Unlike brick-and-mortar retailers, whose inventories were spread out across hundreds or thousands of stores around the country, Amazon had one website and, at that time, a single warehouse and inventory. Amazon's ratio of fixed costs to revenue was considerably more favorable than that of its offline competitors. In other words, Bezos and Covey argued, a dollar that was plugged into Amazon's infrastructure could lead to exponentially greater returns than a dollar that went into the infrastructure of any other retailer in the world. — Brad Stone

De Blasio went even further, delving back into the Target fray. The pol was a trustee of the New York City Employee Retirement System, which owned shares in Target. The left had already forced Target to cease using money in campaigns via trade associations. Yet the retailer hadn't been able to shake the assault; activists sought to continue making an example of it. They scored a particular hit in 2011, when pop star Lady Gaga very publicly ended a deal with Target for her newest album due to its "continued political activity." Target's share price kept dropping. — Kimberley Strassel

Ozon.ru is made up of four businesses. Ozon.ru is an online retailer, O'Courier focuses on shipping, Ozon.Travel, and our most recent acquisition, Sapato, the leading online shoe and accessory retailer. — Maelle Gavet

I work like a retailer. I sell my services, take my money and keep it in the bank. — Shahrukh Khan

Certainly, the perception of the average consumer is a vital part of every business, and if a retailer, service provider, or corporation is sending out signals that its approach is lackadaisical, its methods halfhearted, and its execution indifferent, the business in question could suffer severe-and in some cases, irreparable-losses. — Michael Levine

Every retailer, when they price their goods, looks at their total cost overall. When they have costs go up, they'll price their products accordingly. — Dan Butler

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There were two primary distributors of books at that time, Ingram and Baker and Taylor, so a new retailer wouldn't have to approach each of the thousands of book publishers individually. — Anonymous

Don't deal bitterly with the enemy you see. Deal with the greater enemy that sent your enemy to you. If you focus on dealing with the "retailer", remember that the "producer" can employ more "retailers" and what that means is that your life business will redefine you as "dealer of enemies". Satan is behind the plot! — Israelmore Ayivor

The typical industry approach is [retailers] to treat vendors like the enemy ... If vendors can't make a profit then they don't have money to invest in research and development, which in turn means that the products they bring to the market will be less inspiring to customers, which in turn detriments the retailer's business because customers aren't inspired to buy. People want to cut costs and negotiate aggressively because there's a limited amount of profit to be shared by both sides. As a result of this "death spiral", most retailers fail. — Tony Hsieh

In just 200 tweets we can assess and identify 52 different personality traits of a customer. We ran an analysis over 500,000 people and we really nailed this. Think of providing this powerful insight to a retailer. We can see what they value, not just what they are buying. We have found a 40-45% increase in sales when you recommend upsales based on values instead of past buying behavior. — Sandy Carter

As a retailer, we want everyone out there to earn more money, but then if you're running a business, and we can't make money because the wages are too high, that's a problem. — Gerry Harvey

Thou art a retailer of phrases, and dost deal in remnants of remnants. — William Congreve

We already treat our vendors well, but we can build up our reputation within the vendor community even more by really treating our vendors as true partners in the business. Most vendors aren't happy dealing with most retailers because the retailers, especially the department stores, usually try to squeeze every last dollar out of them. We could be the first major retailer that doesn't try to do that. — Tony Hsieh

The only leverage the manufacturer can apply to the retailer is his relationship with the consumer. And the main element in profit growth is going to have to lie in making his brand more valuable to the retailer, through its being more valuable to the consumer. And that means his brand must be unique, it must have no adequate direct substitutes - because it is in this, after all, that value lies. — Stephen King

I used to be a retailer, and I find it discouraging when somebody comes in and they pick something up and they say, 'Now if you'll sell it to me without the sales tax, I'll buy it.' — Michael Enzi

The desire to collect information on customers is not new for Target or any other large retailer, of course. For decades, Target has collected vast amounts of data on every person who regularly walks into one of its stores. — Charles Duhigg

Is it weird that when I see a cool t shirt or pick up a toothbrush or see a new car I don't think about the product itself? I think about the thousands of people and dollars to make it.

I think about how the retailer that took the risk to buy and resell it. Then I work backwards to the store costs, the distributer who got it there, the shipping company that brought it over from China, the factory workers that made it, the people that sourced the materials and the people that harvested the raw materials, and on and on..
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The global economy is amazing. Your $20 t-shirt is a freaking miracle. — Richie Norton

Apple Stores produce more sales per square foot than any other retailer in the United States, including luxury stores like Tiffany. — Neel Doshi

The reader is not the customer. The retailer is the customer. So I try to have as much interaction with the retailers as possible because those are my customers. — Kelly Sue DeConnick

Historically, noted James Manyika, one of the authors of the McKinsey report, companies kept their eyes on competitors "who looked like them, were in their sector and in their geography." Not anymore. Google started as a search engine and is now also becoming a car company and a home energy management system. Apple is a computer manufacturer that is now the biggest music seller and is also going into the car business, but in the meantime, with Apple Pay, it's also becoming a bank. Amazon, a retailer, came out of nowhere to steal a march on both IBM and HP in cloud computing. Ten years ago neither company would have listed Amazon as a competitor. But Amazon needed more cloud computing power to run its own business and then decided that cloud computing was a business! And now Amazon is also a Hollywood studio. — Thomas L. Friedman

A shift toward access and service would deepen the big-box retailer's relationship to customers and win their loyalty. A service focus would bring more rewarding, frequent, and lasting contact with grateful customers. — Lisa Gansky

Gillen and McKelvie shared their upcoming The Wicked + The Divine with me, and its amazing. Please tell your retailer this week to order! — Mark Waid

Would be better served by continuing to hold an ownership position in a pure-play sporting goods retailer rather than a retail conglomerate. — Jack Smith

I could have closed down bits of British Home Stores to make more money but it's not my style. I want to make my money as a retailer, not by putting people out of work. — Philip Green

Power is winning the battle over who owns the customer: the brand or the retailer. — Leonard Lauder

It was bad enough not having a boyfriend for New Year's Eve. Now I had to cope with Valentine datelessness, feeling consummate social pressure from every retailer in America who stuck hearts and cupids on their windows by January second to rub it in. (Thwonk) — Joan Bauer

You swallow hard when you discover that the old coffee shop is now a chain pharmacy, that the place where you first kissed so-and-so is now a discount electronics retailer, that where you bought this very jacket is now rubble behind a blue plywood fence and a future office building. Damage has been done to your city. You say, 'It happened overnight.' But of course it didn't. Your pizza parlor, his shoeshine stand, her hat store: when they were here, we neglected them. For all you know, the place closed down moments after the last time you walked out the door. (Ten months ago? Six years? Fifteen? You can't remember, can you?) And there have been five stores in that spot before the travel agency. Five different neighborhoods coming and going between then and now, other people's other cities. Or 15, 25, 100 neighborhoods. Thousands of people pass that storefront every day, each one haunting the streets of his or her own New York, not one of them seeing the same thing. — Colson Whitehead

Right now, we continue to see demand at very strong levels. It's tough to find a Wii now. If we hit 100 stores in the area, we would find Wiis in only 20 percent of them today. That tremendous strength we had in December really wiped the pipeline clean. Our pipeline, the retailer pipeline. And so, with that kind of demand, it doesn't suggest the need for any pricing actions. — Cammie Dunaway

It's one thing if you are a luxury brand and have been around for 60 years and can weather the retail storm we've had, but if you are a new brand that's just starting out - whether you are a writer or a retailer - innovating through social media is crucial. Those that are hidden and guarded will not progress. — Kelly Cutrone

Managing the other fellow's business is a fascinating game. Trade unionists all over the country have pronounced ideas for the reform of Wall Street banks; and Wall Street bankers are not far behind in giving plans for the tremendous improvement of trade union policies. Wholesalers have schemes for improving the retailer; the retailer knows just what is wrong in the conduct of wholesale business-and we might go through a long list ... Yet for some reason the classes that ought to be helped keep on stubbornly clinging to their own method of running their affairs ... — B.C. Forbes

Target isn't alone in its desire to predict consumers' habits. Almost every major retailer, including Amazon, Best Buy, Kroger supermarkets, 1-800-Flowers, Olive Garden, Anheuser-Busch, the U.S. Postal Service, Fidelity Investments, Hewlett-Packard, Bank of America, Capital One, and hundreds of others, have "predictive analytics" departments devoted to figuring out consumers' preferences. "But Target has always been one of the smartest at this," said Eric Siegel, who runs a conference called Predictive Analytics World. "The data doesn't mean anything on its own. Target's good at figuring out the really clever questions. — Charles Duhigg