It’s no secret that 2009 will be a challenging year for specialty retailers. Retailers are having to make a flurry of decisions every day based on an unprecedented economic downturn, and let’s face it, no one clearly knows the right decisions from the wrong ones.

One thing seems clear. The right decisions involve practices that focus on customer-centric growth practices. Some keys to success in this economy include managing your inventory, monitoring your markdowns, and maintaining and supporting your customer base.

Unfortunately, many retailers react with cost cutting measures without engaging in forward thinking. Many cut staff to reduce cost, which often results in a poor customer experience. Others cut consulting expenses that have a proven track record over time. It is important to be calm and remind yourself of the why you have been successful in the past and stay calm in the height of the storm.

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Directly or indirectly, companies spend millions of dollars building and protecting their brands. In the early 1990’s, many companies woke up to discover the internet and the power of the web. In several cases, they spent tens of thousands of dollars to purchase their domain name. It appears that, for the most part, we didn’t learn our lesson and history is once again staged to repeat itself.

The Web 2.0 era has changed the way consumers interact and communicate. Social networking, once considered to be a fad, has now expanded to include business, professional and social communities. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and LinkedIn are just a few such sites that have seen explosions in both professional and personal use.

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Successful retailers understand that multi-channel retailing and cross-channel retailing are not the same. Customers are beginning to demand autonomy across the channels in both customer experience and product offerings. Multi-channel retailing is simply the mechanism to sell ones goods via a multitude of purchasing points. Sometimes these sales represent the same customer, but not necessarily, and most of the time visibility across these ever-increasing channels is not available. Cross-channel retailing is at the heart of any customer-centric environment, and brings a sharing of information across all the channels.

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