Jonathan Czaja

The 1 single biggest mistake I see retailers make when trying to grow through expanding their store network - and why this is costing them millions every year in profit. Retail expansion has a hidden cost that rarely appears in the business case: Pricing complexity. Going from 700 stores to 1,000 doesn’t just mean 300 more locations to price. It means more local competitors. More differences in willingness to pay. More assortment variations. More price zones. More decisions about KVIs and price image. And potentially millions more pricing decisions. Yet many retailers scale their store network without scaling the way they make those decisions. This has two possible consequences: 1: The pricing team grows more or less linearly with the business 2: Pricing becomes increasingly standardized And that’s where it gets interesting. Because the larger the network becomes, the less sensible one national answer to “What should this product cost?” can become. A store competing against a discounter in one town may require a very different price position from a store 100 km away with an entirely different competitive environment. So perhaps one of the questions in every retail expansion strategy should be: Can our pricing operating model scale as fast as our store network? AI changes the economics of that question. The goal shouldn’t be 40% more stores requiring 40% more pricing resources. It should be a pricing organization capable of managing dramatically more complexity without dramatically more people. Because opening another store is relatively easy. Making the right thousands of pricing decisions for it, every week, for years to come? That’s where scale gets difficult.

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Retail performance does not begin at the checkout counter. It begins with energy. Before a guest ever picks up a product, they are reading your retail environment. They are responding to your team’s confidence, your merchandising message, and the clarity of your recommendations. In my new column for ISPA Pulse, I explore how simple shifts — micro mindset resets and five-minute merchandising refreshes — can immediately strengthen retail results. Small structure. Clear intention. Consistent rhythm. If you are an ISPA member, you can read “Setting the Stage for Retail Success” in the February issue, page 46. Retail is not accidental. It is designed. ISPA - International SPA Association #ISPA #SpaLeadership #RetailStrategy #HospitalityLeadership #SalesTraining

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Store Closures Aren’t A Retail Apocalypse. They’re A Leadership Audit Everyone keeps saying 2026 is the year retail “finally breaks.” That’s lazy thinking. Closures aren’t happening because consumers vanished. They’re happening because tolerance for mediocrity did. Macy’s planning to exit roughly 150 underperforming locations by end of 2026. Walgreens continuing to unwind hundreds of pharmacies tied to expiring leases. Carter’s trimming about 100 stores across 2025–2026. Kroger closing around 60 locations for marginal but necessary margin repair. This isn’t panic. It’s overdue hygiene. USA Today, Jan 2026. Forbes, Dec 2025. Most of those stores were already dead on the P&L. We just kept them alive with excuses. I’ve sat in rooms where everyone knew the store network was broken but no one wanted to own the decision. Traffic erosion masked by promos. Labor flexed past reason. Inventory turns that never recovered. Online didn’t kill these stores. Indecision did. NRF reported in Nov 2025 that over 70% of retail executives now rank store productivity and omnichannel contribution ahead of raw store count. DigitalCommerce360, Oct 2025, shows DTC penetration continuing to climb while physical square footage declines. Those curves aren’t crossing by accident. A store today earns its keep three ways or it doesn’t earn it at all: Profit contribution Customer acquisition Fulfillment leverage If it fails all three, it’s not strategy to keep it open. It’s avoidance. The mirror moment most leaders won’t admit 💵 If you wouldn’t greenlight that store today with fresh capital, you shouldn’t be defending it with legacy pride. Closures aren’t retreat. They’re a capital reallocation signal. Which stores in your fleet survive only because no one wants to say the quiet part out loud? If this hits close to home, you’re not alone. #Retail #Ecommerce #EcommerceNews #Leadership #Innovation #LeadershipMatters #RetailNews 📲 Follow me for more retail and e-commerce insights. More in the comments below.

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