Operations

Recruiting and retaining quality employees are essential to the success of your business. Keeping your employees loyal, productive and happy means maintaining a positive work culture in your store, providing recognition and fostering engagement. The National Federation of Independent Business …

In 2015, farm and home lifestyle company Wilco, which has 18 stores throughout Oregon and Washington, set out to refresh its paint and sundries department, which had seen flat sales in 2012 and 2013. The Wilco team worked to bring …

By Scott Wright, swright@nrha.org To view a PDF of this story, click here. In any typical home improvement store, there are generally six or seven core hardlines departments that do the “heavy lifting” of generating sales and gross margin dollars …

This should be a banner year for consumer spending on Halloween, according to a survey from the National Retail Federation (NRF). The survey predicts total spending will reach $8.4 billion, an all-time high in the survey’s 11-year history. That should …

What do boxes of family photos, old purses, bags of old clothing, antique dishes and hardware have in common? They’re all for sale every Tuesday and Saturday at Feira da Ladra in Lisbon, Portugal. Feira da Ladra is a flea …

By Kate Klein, kklein@nrha.org, and Hilary Welter, hwelter@nrha.org You’ve read the stories about data breaches, but are the numbers too big to hit home? In September 2014, Home Depot confirmed that hackers used malware, or software designed to steal digitally stored …

Cybercrime is a growing threat to small businesses like yours as large companies with more resources invest millions of dollars to beef up their data security. While big-box data gets more secure, small business’ customer payment card numbers and other sensitive …

To view a PDF of this story, click here. Picture it: A customer walks into your store and receives an alert on his phone about a special on charcoal for his grill. He received the alert because he purchased a …