Over the past few days, I, like many of you, have been following the news around the murder of George Floyd, and I’m still trying to process it all. The senseless violence, the broken communities, the growing list of black Americans whose lives have been taken from them in brutal and tragic ways. Simply put,...
COVID-19 has triggered a paradigm shift in the fashion industry. This was a key finding from a recent report published by Martens & Heads! Executive Consultancy titled, Beyond 2020: Reflections On the Next Chapter. The report compiles responses from a questionnaire Martens & Heads sent to its retail- and fashion-based clients and members of its...
Managing the financial health of their businesses, marketing and selling their products/services without seeming insensitive or tone deaf, and work-life balance are the key challenges our readers and members are currently facing as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. This data comes courtesy of a recent Women in Retail Leadership Circle survey sent to our...
Dreamr, a specialized, full-service brand box firm founded by Women in Retail Leadership Circle (WIRLC) partner Patti Hester, has launched the Gratitude Box project, a nonprofit program that enables consumers to gift care boxes to frontline healthcare heroes, first responders, and essential workers who are risking their lives with selfless acts during the COVID-19 crisis....
R.Riveter, an American-made handbag company that supports military families by providing military spouses with flexible employment, recently pivoted its business to focus on sewing face mask covers in an effort to provide much-needed supplies to front-line workers fighting against COVID-19. In the interview below, R.Riveter’s founder Lisa Bradley discusses how the initiative began, how it’s...
Mother’s Day is going to be a little different this year. While the holiday is usually celebrated with family outings to brunch or mother-daughter spa days, many of these traditions will be postponed until next year as the coronavirus pandemic makes social distancing the new normal. But this doesn’t mean Mother’s Day 2020 has to...
I wanted to start this week’s opening letter by letting you know that the Women in Retail Leadership Summit has been postponed from Aug. 24-26 to Oct. 12-14. The Summit will still take place at the Ritz-Carlton Key Biscayne, Miami. We think pushing back the Summit is the best decision for the health, safety, and...
How is everyone hanging in there? It’s hard to believe that many of us have been living and working in our new normals for more than a month now. Personally, I’ve settled in pretty well, as long as I take daily walks, eat well, and turn off the news (as a form of self-preservation). I’ve...
Women in Retail Leadership Circle (WIRLC) is first and foremost a community. It’s our duty to best serve you, our incredible community of women leaders. As such, we want to ensure we’re providing you with the most relevant and useful in formation right now — and we believe the best insights come from engaging with all of...
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time speaking to retailers, friends and colleagues on the phone (and, of course, on Zoom) about the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact it is having on the retail industry. From those conversations, it has become increasingly clear to me that we’re in a unified...
