A Market Snapshot of How Category Excellence Creates Sustainable Competitive Advantage In today’s rapidly evolving retail landscape, traditional specialty retail models are facing unprecedented challenges. Our latest report, created in partnership with SAP and EverBlue, reveals how successful specialty retailers are transforming their expertise into sustainable competitive advantage. THE NEW SPECIALTY RETAIL IMPERATIVE The retail landscape has fundamentally shifted:• Direct Brands Reshape Competition – Digital-first brands are building billion-dollar businesses without stores and cutting traditional margins through vertical integration• Supply Chain Drives Differentiation – Smart sourcing has evolved from risk management into a competitive weapon that determines market share• Labor Becomes Strategic Advantage – Expert talent acquisition has moved from an HR challenge to a board-level priority• Cost Structures Must Transform – Store economics need a complete reset for the digital age with new revenue streams• Scale Changes Everything – Regional players must find ways to compete against national digital brands• Expertise Must Industrialize – Product knowledge can’t stay locked in individual experts’ heads and must scale digitally FIVE KEY TRANSFORMATION IMPERATIVES 1. Transform Product Authority into Customer ValueMove beyond product information to become engines of customer success. Build unified customer profiles, drive lifestyle-based merchandising, and turn knowledge into tangible value. 2. Make Every Interaction Immersive and InspirationalTurn every customer touchpoint into an experience that builds confidence through intelligent guidance, interactive confidence-building tools, and project-based personalization. 3. Turn Complex Categories into Simple ExperiencesTransform overwhelming product choices into guided journeys with real-time visibility, flexible fulfillment options, and predictive intelligence that anticipates customer needs. 4. Make Expertise Accessible EverywhereCreate seamless connections between self-service tools and expert guidance through unified product knowledge, expert handoffs between channels, and consistent service quality. 5. Build Operations that Enable Innovation at ScaleDevelop flexible foundations that turn market changes into opportunities with cloud innovation, automated category excellence, and rapid testing capabilities. THE PATH FORWARDLeading specialty retailers are rebuilding their businesses around five essential capabilities:• Expert Excellence at Scale• Community-Powered Growth• Unified Service Excellence• Value Through Intelligence• Precision Operations
