Rewriting Retail: The Model, the Myth, the Missed Opportunity
A romcom for 2025
I am in a privileged position getting to speak to many of the greatest minds in ecommerce and retail. I also get to speak to Nick Kaplan Kaplan. It sometimes gives me pause for thought. This week more than most, I have had so many disturbing, enlightening and interesting discussions. My own assertions are more than crystalized. The retail industry is not dead — but the model many of us still cling to is, at best, on life support and, at worst, a ghost ship captained by spreadsheets and nostalgia.
This isn’t about individual brands or CEOs. It’s about a system. One that confuses quarterly results with long-term resilience. One that treats the customer and their data as separate entities. One that still clings to the illusion of brand loyalty like it’s 1997 and you’re waiting for a mail-order catalog to arrive.
David Katz of Randa Apparel joined us recently on The Watson Weekend and offered something few people in senior roles do anymore: a detailed look under the hood of what a modern, resilient retail model actually looks like, not in theory, but in operation. It's an approach that's almost jarringly different from the public retail model we so often see stumble.
Some of the aspects I am willing to share..
The Retail Model Most People Are Still Using
Here’s the public playbook, in case you forgot:
Centralized decision-making that relies on outdated consumer forecasts.
Loyalty programs that assume consumers actually care.
Brand marketing divorced from real-time consumer behavior.
Inventory purchased a year in advance, without a Plan B.
A rigid operating model built for stability, not speed.
When you hear about department stores closing doors or fashion retailers missing guidance five quarters in a row, you’re not witnessing a freak event. You’re seeing the downstream effect of a model that assumes control in a world shaped by chaos.
The result? Shrinking margins, fading relevance, and a pipeline of initiatives that sound good in boardrooms but never touch the shop floor — physical or digital.
One sidenote. We have 2 lingering views on customers. We have the customer and their behavior and we have customer data. The two are not linked. Physically I mean - we bridge this gap through assumptions. We make a major faux paz here. In doing so we create silos with our own customers in doing so, missing the signals we need to respond to. What happens is we react. Words matter.
Last week, we had David Baker Baker give one of the best insights into the detail of how to market through digital means, the lens, the mechanism and everything else. A student of politics and someone who has values close to his way of being makes for a very curious, accurate marketer. Bolt on a big brain and you get CDO in Loreal and more. Listen in if you have not already.
Romantic pop and the new wave agenda
Now contrast that with what I learned this week. The new model is not only smarter, it’s fundamentally different. Not revolutionary. Not buzzword-laden. Just aligned with reality.
Here’s what that looks like:
1. Multi-Channel Mastery, Not Dependence
“Best in Breed” plays across every channel, from high-end department stores to off-price, from DTC to global wholesale. And they don’t just exist in these channels, they optimize for each one’s unique customer mindset, margin structure, and brand value.
Where a typical publicly held retailer might see online as a “growth lever” and physical retail as a “headwind,” Good sees both as interdependent inputs to a wider strategy.
“We sell to Nordstrom and Saks… but we also make belts for Kirkland and private label for Target and Macy’s. It’s about owning the supply chain and the brand touchpoints.”
Compare that to the fragile dependence some brands have on just 1–2 distribution points. When one falters, so does the whole house of cards.
From Loyalty to Logic
“Has loyalty died… and has logic replaced it?”
Consumers today don’t operate on loyalty programs they operate on logic. Believe it or not, I said this. Met with a “good question”. I was happy. They chase utility, relevance, and immediacy. My interviewee recognizes this and instead of fighting it, his org models behavior around it. Their infrastructure is the loyalty plan.
The underperforming public retailer, on the other hand, clings to legacy brand equity like it's a moat. But brand alone isn't protection. In fact, legacy is often a liability when your customer has moved on and your data still thinks it’s 2016.
International Arbitrage as Strategy
Good retailer and his team use international markets as early signals, not expansion trophies. Their acquisition of Moss Bros in the UK, just before lockdown, wasn’t just global ambition. It was insight-driven. They were already watching UK and Australian retail erosion as a preview of US conditions.
This kind of foresight, building optionality through global diversification is rare. Most public retail strategies are U.S.-centric, channel-siloed, and take far too long to respond to market shifts. The result is businesses that are local in thinking and slow in reacting — which is dangerous when TikTok is your new storefront. Indeed it was impressive to be in this call hearing about Irish retail and UK from a US leading voice. Holiday mode evaporated and my ears perked up further.
Strategy Over Forecasts
“Most companies start with tactics and never define strategy. That’s backwards.”
The most devastating insight from interviews this week might be this one.
Public retailers build forecasts like they’re planning a royal wedding 12 months out, perfectly timed, rigid to a fault. But today’s market demands dynamic strategy. Inventory can’t be a static commitment it has to be a fluid bet based on weekly inputs. Notice the wording Nick Kaplan, bet. Preceded by fluid adds a dimension of real time analysis, thus eroding the term of gambling, rather, this is making an informed choice and being prepared to be wrong.
The mindset? Flexibility. Global listening. Owned factories and vertical integration. Not because it's trendy, but because when everything shifts overnight, you need fewer approvals and more action.
Capital, Culture, and Consciousness
Here’s where Good really separates his model from the pack. Good treats culture as a supply chain input. Capital structure as a strategic tool. And consciousness understanding who your customer is and what they want today as an operating principle.
Contrast that with public companies who are forced into a short-term margin obsession to satisfy shareholders, stripping investment in tech, people, and culture just to make quarterly EBITDA look presentable. That’s not strategy that’s survival theatre.
The Public Model’s Fatal Flaws
Let’s be blunt: if a brand is…
Beholden to stale loyalty metrics.
Betting the farm on fall fashion forecasts.
Underinvesting in its own infrastructure.
Not watching what’s happening in South Africa or Sydney.
Unwilling to rethink the model instead of the marketing…
…then it's not being “disrupted” — it's being outmaneuvered.
These brands aren’t failing because of external forces. They’re failing because they’re using the wrong playbook. Some, no playbook at all.
Rewriting Retail Means Rebuilding the Model
You can’t reboot retail without admitting the first version was flawed. The sequel isn’t better just because it’s new. And in many cases, the spin-offs (looking at you, marketplace brand extensions and lazy livestream attempts) are just poorly lit remakes with less talent.
What Good offers is something better: an operating model designed to flex, diversify, and grow in sync with consumer behavior, not despite it.
It’s not flashy. But it works. And more importantly — it’s built to last.
Final Thought:
Retail doesn’t need more storytelling. It needs better scripts. It needs operational realism over theatrical optimism. It needs a business model where the customer and their data don’t just co-exist, they co-write the future. So before you greenlight another seasonal strategy or launch another loyalty campaign, ask yourself:
Are you writing the next great retail sequel — or just rebooting a model that should’ve ended in the last act?
