Beauty
Pulling at Our Heartstrings
I am a proud Millennial. I look fondly on memories of playing with my Skip It, being obsessed with gel pens, playing MASH with my friends to find out what my future would hold, and having what see...
Sports
Sneakernomics: Second Quarter Performance for the U.S. Athletic Footwear and Activewear Markets
The calendar was kinder to the second quarter than the first, but challenges still remain in the athletic footwear and activewear space. While the overall Q2 sales trend (April-June) in athletic...
The Power of a Back-to-College Connection
Excitement and happiness are present for many of today’s back-to-college shoppers, but they also report feeling stressed, anxious, and overwhelmed, especially as moving day gets closer. Combined ...
Beauty
Are Beard Oils the New Aftershave?
As a kid, I used to watch my dad shave his face. I especially loved it when he would clap his face with aftershave, look into the mirror and say, “Damn, I’m handsome,” signaling the completion of ...
Apparel
Personalizing Prime?
We recently welcomed Alexa into my family through Amazon’s latest virtual assistant option, the Echo Show. She claimed prime real-estate on the kitchen counter thanks to her new seven inch touchs...
Sports
Sneakernomics: The State of the Outdoor Business
The overall state of the U.S. outdoor business has not been very good. According to data from NPD’s Retail Tracking Service, dollar sales are down year-to-date through May 2017 compared to the sam...
Retail
4 Calculations for Retail to Study This Back-to-School Season
The back-to-school shopping season has gotten trickier to focus in on as a retailer. The shifting dynamics at play, from channel blurring to consumer needs, have created a very different back-to-schoo...
Toys
You’ve Heard of KGOY, But What About AGYO?
I’m sure many of you have felt this same feeling as I have… I might look older on the outside, but I feel like I’m still 25 on the inside. I’m a grown woman with teenagers, but sometimes I want to...
Sports
Sneakernomics: The Future Looks PUNY!
There has certainly been a lot of bad news for the U.S. sports industry recently. We cited the dramatic slowdown in the sneaker purchases by Hispanics, as well as a pessimistic prediction for back...
Toys
Back-to-School: Friend or Foe to the Toy Industry?
It’s hard to think about the topic of back-to-school when my kids just wrapped up school only two weeks ago here in New York. But, alas, we at NPD have already started to talk about it as retailer...
Foodservice
What’s Really Happening With Independent Restaurants?
I’m very privileged to get to travel this great nation each week and share data and insights about food and beverage consumption trends. While it’s my job to share what I’ve learned from studying ...
Prime Day Showing Its Age
With Amazon’s now annual summer buying event upon us, we’re looking back at the past two years to evaluate the impact of Prime Day to tech vendors, to Amazon’s tech business, to Amazon’s Kindle/Ec...
Fashion Accessories
Branded Logo Tees - The New “It Thing”?
Fashion trends are a funny thing. Whether it’s mom jeans or bomber jackets, rompers or Birkenstock’s, you never quite know what the next “in thing” will be. Well earlier this week as I was on my ...
Sports
Sneakernomics: Athletic Footwear and Activewear Back-to-School 2017 Predictions
I am more pessimistic today than I was in December about the short-term prospects for the U.S. athletic footwear and apparel markets. Late last year, my expectation was that 2017 would be an average y...
Automotive
Shifting [Generational] Gears
The automotive aftermarket will see a complete transformation of its core consumer over the next 10 years. Millennials, who have now surpassed Baby Boomers as the largest living generation in the U...
Apparel
Entering the World of “Spashion”
Eight glasses of water…check. Ten thousand steps…check. Whole grains…check. From clean eating to athleisure makeup, the idea of living a healthy lifestyle is here to stay and making its presence k...
Beauty
The New Age
Recently, my mother broke both of her wrists and had casts from her hands to her elbows for two months. One of her main concerns was her nightly ritual of potions and lotions that my step-father w...
Sports
Sneakernomics: Hispanics’ Sneaker Slowdown
U.S. athletic footwear sales have been a puzzle this spring. While I accurately predicted the weakness due to the late income tax refunds and late Easter, the expected bounce-back simply did not h...
Technology
K12 - “This is U.S. history, I see the globe right there.”
It’s that time of year again; school instruction is coming to a close and Jeff Spicoli is about to get a visit from Mr. Hand to go over the history lessons he ignored (reference: Fast Times at Rid...
Footwear
Déjà Shoe
In the mid-‘90s, as a junior in college, I asked my boyfriend, Ross, (now husband) to buy me shoes for our one-year anniversary, rather than roses. This may have seemed a bit offbeat and forward t...
Sports
Sneakernomics: Fall Sports Recap
Earlier this month, I wrote about the slow start to the spring sports season. Looking at the traditional fall season sports, including soccer, American football and basketball, I am expecting sale...
HomePod is an Interesting Test for Apple
This time last year, when interest in the Amazon Echo and Google Home were at a fever pitch, many observers wondered why Apple hadn’t yet made a voice-activated speaker. After all, Apple has the p...
A Long-Term Proposition
The general thinking around healthy-living has evolved. Instead of “going on a diet,” which is a short-term behavior, more people seem to be thinking of their diet in the broader sense and are foc...
Noise in the Smarter Machine
The lady sitting in front of me on the tram was clearly into her music. She was using headphones, but we could all clearly hear Eric Clapton’s dulcet tones explaining that he would, “wait in this ...
Sports
Sneakernomics: Spring Sports Have Not Yet Sprung
Unconventional springtime weather that’s more akin to the late fall season is having a dampening effect on U.S. team sports equipment sales. With the recent expansion of The NPD Group’s Retail Trackin...
Beauty
The Secret Behind Suncare
One of the things that I love most about my job is that there is so much data available at my fingertips. When I’m looking for a new product to buy, I always turn to NPD data first to see what...
Video Games
Video Game Industry Predictions for Holiday 2017 and What to Watch at E3
2017 has been a fantastic year to be a video game fan. The Nintendo Switch has experienced a strong launch, supported by The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Highly ...
Foodservice
The Growing Influence of U.S. Hispanics: Are you Ready?
If you’ve heard me speak in public then you’re well aware of how I describe change in food and beverage habits – slow like the movement of the tectonic plates, but this means you need to take many...
Commercial Technology
I Wouldn’t Do That if I Were You – The Surveillance Market
Physical security and cybersecurity go hand-in-hand with protecting corporate assets; and while news of cybercrime has recently dominated the headlines, issues regarding security as a whole have b...
Sports
Sneakernomics: Golf Sales in Decline
As I wrote about here, the macro environment for golf is pretty unpleasant. Courses are closing, brands are shuttering, retailers are going out of business, and young people are not adopting the g...
All That Glitters…
LeEco’s vision for the U.S. was bright and promising, but a bit more fleeting than some anticipated. The company started that way, with a spectacular launch event that promised an array of hardwar...
Sports
Sneakernomics: The U.S. Team Sports Equipment Marketplace
This week, NPD reached another important milestone with the launch of its team sports equipment tracking service: we now provide the most comprehensive reporting available on the entire universe o...
Trending Articles
- Sneakernomics: The State of the Outdoor Business
- 4 Calculations for Retail to Study This Back-to-School Season
- Gen Xers – The Forgotten Generation – Now Represent Almost A Quarter of All Restaurant Visits
- Personalizing Prime?
- U.S. Toy Industry Grows its Sales by 3 Percent Mid-Way Through 2017, Reports The NPD Group
- Sneakernomics: The State of the Outdoor Industry