Welcome to our curated collection of insightful retail quotes! Retail, as an industry, is an intricate tapestry woven from consumer behavior, economic trends, and the art of persuasion. It’s a dynamic arena where businesses strive to meet the ever-changing needs and desires of customers while navigating the complexities of market competition. From the bustling streets of urban shopping districts to the convenience of online platforms, retail encompasses a broad spectrum of experiences and strategies.
Throughout history, visionaries, entrepreneurs, and industry experts have shared their wisdom and observations about the world of retail. Whether it’s insights into customer service, the impact of technology, or the psychology behind purchasing decisions, these quotes offer valuable perspectives for both seasoned professionals and aspiring retailers. As you explore the quotes below, consider how these words of wisdom resonate with your own experiences in the realm of retail, and perhaps find inspiration for your own journey in this dynamic field. Now, without further ado, delve into the wisdom of the retail world through these enlightening quotes!
I’m more interested in the meaning of funerals and the mourning that people do. It’s not a retail experience. It’s an existential one. Thomas Lynch
Technology is fundamentally changing what it means to work – and the retail industry is no exception. Doug McMillon
I support both a Fair Tax and a Flat Tax plan that would dramatically streamline the tax system. A Fair Tax would replace all federal taxes on personal and corporate income with a single national tax on retail sales, while a Flat Tax would apply the same tax rate to all income with few if any deductions or exemptions. Ralph Hall
The god whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals. William James
If any PC manufacturer has made money selling PCs retail in the last 10 years, I’d like to know who they are. Ted Waitt
As retail goes through a fundamental shift into the digital world, I believe Ocado’s model and the high standards of customer service it provides will see it emerge as a powerful online player. Stuart Rose
At some point, all comics have to go out and be retail salesmen doing door-to-door. And this idea of somebody who totally knows their craft having to get up for free in front of a crowd to work out some stuff they’re thinking in their head, still, after as much success as you can get, is really interesting. Ira Glass
Even before it opened its retail arm, Beigh was renowned among pashmina cognoscenti for the quality and complexity of the work produced in its workshop, a large, airy, sunlit rectangle of a room directly across from its second-floor shop. Hanya Yanagihara
I only like luxury fashion. You have to decide where you stand. I like well-made, authentic clothes, well-crafted tailoring. I also like the dream and fantasy of luxury, the exception and rarity of it. I have no interest at all in fast retail. It is ambiguous. Hedi Slimane
The rich pay more in total taxes now than ever before – ever. It’s true. Just like it’s true that when the rich are convinced they’re going to be taxed more, they spend less. And when the top few percenters don’t spend, there goes all your spending, because they account for half of all retail spending. Neil Cavuto
Every time a consumer walks into a retail store, experiences the Nokia experience for the first time and purchases that product. Those are the moments where you say, ‘We’ve hit it. We’ve nailed it.’ Stephen Elop
My businesses are all related – retail, shopping centers, banking, real estate, and tourism development. Together they create synergy. Henry Sy
Let there be no mistake: John W. Nordstrom was no retail expert. But throughout his life, he did what he had to do – hopefully we all have that in us. Bruce Nordstrom
There’s only so much stuff you can buy. I have to retail the stuff. Stuff that’s really really weird – it’s cool, but who are you going to sell it to? I do collect some stuff. In the end, I have to run a business. Rick Harrison
The power of digital distribution over physical retail outlets is you have a chance to create a global audience. Chad Hurley
The challenge of the retail business is the human condition. Howard Schultz
Canada Day comes and goes modestly every year. Sure, there are retail sales promotions and a long weekend. But there isn’t bluster or commodity in Canadian celebration. Canada isn’t big on bunting. Or jet flyovers, fireworks, marching bands or military pomp. Rick Moranis
Arkansas is a state where politics is retail. Mike Huckabee
We also never undercut representatives’ prices. A representative will always be able to sell the discounts in our core business, which are not offered at retail. So it’s never more advantageous to buy there. Andrea Jung
For a Jewish Puritan of the middle class, the novel is serious, the novel is work, the novel is conscientious application why, the novel is practically the retail business all over again. Howard Nemerov
I bought into Saks as a personal investment because, when I was a young man and went to America for the first time, it seemed to me that Saks was like a cathedral of retail. I never dreamt that I could one day be a part of it. And now I am. Diego Della Valle
I wanted to create a new way of looking at retail. Tory Burch
My mom had been a script supervisor in Hungary, but you can’t just jump into that in Canada without knowing any English. She worked retail jobs and raised my sister and me while learning English. Petra Collins
I’ve made my records and I’ve done all the interviews. I’ve done lots of long tours. I’ve made stupid videos. I’ve done all that stuff and learned all the lingo and gone to radio stations and shmoozed with DJs on the air and met retail people. Frank Black
Trying to move the volume of products we’re talking about from place to place to get it ultimately into the customer’s hands, to price these items, to market these items, I think the retail business is incredibly complex. But if you get it right, it’s a beautiful thing. Edward Lampert
As more workers lose manufacturing jobs as companies cut back, some are being forced into lower-paying retail jobs. But they still have union cards in their wallets. Bill Dedman
A lot of times, I can put a product together with a distributor when I go into my Rolodex for distributors. I can then put it together with a face, such as an artist. And then I can go into my databank of retailers and people that I’ve been working with through the years of retail, and then also manufacturing. Daymond John
My first job was in retail at the age of 14, and I have worked in the industry ever since. Rachel Roy
I’m not from a retail background, but I am a shopper. Edward Lampert
Millions of Americans and businesses rely on the Postal Service to deliver our medicine, ballots, and retail goods – securely and on time. The Postal Service deserves our full support. Alex Padilla
Our view is that consumer finance – what people think of as retail finance – that arena is ripe for disruption. Bitcoin is absolutely a core platform and asset format that we are dependent on to build this business. Jeremy Allaire
The investment we’re all looking for is actually saving labor… Look at what the internet is doing to retail. James Chanos
If you think about Cisco’s offerings like TelePresence, where it’s an immersive way to communicate for businesses to connect and have conversations in a real-time immersive mode, how that will change health care, how that’ll change retail business, how that’ll change actually travel. There’s lots of changes that we will see going forward. Padmasree Warrior
I wanted to be a writer, but at the time, I spent my days working a retail job, my nights sleeping in my childhood bedroom, and while I had written short stories here and there, I didn’t know how to write good fiction anymore than I knew how to perform good brain surgery. Anthony Marra
A robber who justified his theft by saying that he really helped his victims, by his spending giving a boost to retail trade, would find few converts; but when this theory is clothed in Keynesian equations and impressive references to the ‘multiplier effect,’ it unfortunately carries more conviction. Murray Rothbard
People always say to me, ‘You’ve really strived to redefine retail.’ But the reality is, I wanted to redefine magazines. Natalie Massenet
No wonder they call shopping ‘retail therapy,’ as any girl will tell you how it just takes away all the stress. Riya Sen
I spend all my time right now trying to combat music retail and copyright. Garth Brooks
Retail banking in Africa is very weak. You can’t go to a village and get money from an ATM or visit a branch of the bank. So people have to use the Internet. Mo Ibrahim
You walk into a retail store, whatever it is, and if there’s a sense of entertainment and excitement and electricity, you wanna be there. Howard Schultz
Jeff Bezos was one of those best and brightest who came to N.Y. to work in finance. He didn’t need to know anything about retail bookselling to start Amazon. Jose Ferreira
When I started my company, many people said I shouldn’t launch it as a retail concept because it was too big a risk. They told me to launch as a wholesaler to test the waters – because that was the traditional way. Tory Burch
People are scrambling to figure out how they can prolong the life of an album. But as long as the shelf space continues to shrink at retail, there’s just no room for them anymore… which is fine with me! I would love to be the next person in country to just release digital singles, but I think we’re probably a little ways from that. Blake Shelton
It was always a plan that we were going to have a retail side with what were doing musically, like an Apple store or Nike Town. I wanted something where you can come get everything – ‘Marathon’ or ‘All Money’ or ‘Crenshaw’ – and make it like an experience. Especially with what Crenshaw and Slauson meant to my story. Nipsey Hussle
McDonald’s has been extraordinary at site selection; it was a pioneer in studying the best places for retail locations. One of the things it did is study very carefully where sprawl was headed. Eric Schlosser
I’m paranoid about shopping. I get irritable. I find it tedious and taxing. People say shopping is retail therapy, but I need therapy after shopping. Anushka Sharma
I’ve had a lot of seedy side jobs. I’ve done it all. I’ve worked retail at the mall, just tons of side jobs, which I think are amazing for actors. I think everyone should have one! It helps you get more experiences, and the more experiences you have, the more you can channel into a character. Olesya Rulin
In a world lit by data, street corners are painted with contextual information, automobiles can navigate autonomously, thermostats respond to patterns of activity, and retail outlets change as rapidly (and individually) as search results from Google. John Battelle
I think we can bring a new retail language to Rockefeller Center that would really change Midtown. Jerry Speyer
It is difficult to think of a major industry that AI will not transform. This includes healthcare, education, transportation, retail, communications, and agriculture. There are surprisingly clear paths for AI to make a big difference in all of these industries. Andrew Ng
People in retail banks are not smart. They have a business model that’s quite difficult to not make money out of – but still they somehow manage it. Peter Hargreaves
Chains do more than bargain down prices from suppliers or divide fixed costs across a lot of units. They rapidly spread economic discovery – the scarce and costly knowledge of what retail concepts and operational innovations actually work. Virginia Postrel
In the South, we tell stories. We tell stories if you’re in a sales position, if you’re in a retail position, you lure your customer by telling a story. You just do. Tate Taylor
I want entrepreneurs to be engineers and scientists and designers; they don’t necessarily have to be Internet entrepreneurs or retail entrepreneurs. James Dyson
To make a bestseller, there are more customers than just your customers: Selling to the end-user is just one piece of the puzzle. In my case, I needed to first sell myself to the publisher to get marketing support and national retail distribution. Tim Ferriss
There’s a restaurant in Manhattan called Balthazar, and next to it is Balthazar Bakery. It’s tiny, and it’s very charming to have that little retail outlet to sell the house desserts and breads. Tom Douglas
Our company sells about five to six million pounds of sausage a year. We sell it retail and to restaurants. We’ve got all kinds of products. Earl Campbell
No one in my family had a retail or marketing background. They were professionals. They didn’t understand just what I was doing by going into retailing. After I started, though, it got into my blood. I knew this was what I wanted. Andrea Jung
We got to know the competition very well. In the ’50s popcorn made a big growth in sales. Our main push was to produce the best quality and sell in quality retail outlets. Orville Redenbacher
I don’t think we yet know – because it’s probably not big enough – what exactly Amazon does to our cities, but whatever it is, I don’t anticipate retail wastelands. If anything, it’s maybe a wake-up call to retailers that they just have to offer something meaningful to customers. Brad Stone
At age 28, I had no retail experience, no consumer marketing experience and no real Internet experience. But I decided I wanted to work for myself. I felt starting a company would enable me to get the responsibility I deserved and that I couldn’t do that within the confines of a bigger company. Mariam Naficy
You replace it by 23 percent tax, a frank, transparent tax embedded in the cost at retail, and everybody gets to takes their whole check home. And the average income earner gets a 50 percent increase in take-home pay. John Linder
I wasn’t going to get such a nice car – I was going to get a cute little hybrid or something, keep the trees happy – but then my grandfather died, and it was all: retail therapy! Chris Colfer
We are extremely focused on building some of the assets which are going into mid-India, semi-urban and rural, and that’s our DNA. We are building a retail bank, and a lot of the deposit base is still in urban India. Uday Kotak
Wal-Mart is an amazing success story. What I particularly admire very much about the late Sam Walton was his policy of valuing his employees. Giving value to employees is very rare in the retail industry. I also admire the strategies Walton used to build up his discount store concept. Tadashi Yanai
We’re the only major company in the U.S. that is solely in the professional beauty industry. We promised hairdressers when we started that we would stay with them. If I went retail tomorrow then we would be four times our size overnight, but I’m going to be the one guy who kept his word. John Paul DeJoria
I’ve never worked in a retail store, but I did sell shoes at Gimme Shoes in San Francisco, a job I was fired from. Sophia Amoruso
The high street is not a retail thing: it’s a social thing, part of the British lifestyle. And I say that as someone who started his life on Limassol high street in Cyprus. Theo Paphitis
The American consumer is also the American worker, and if we don’t do something to protect our manufacturing base here at home, it is going to be hard to buy any retail goods. Lindsey Graham
My father’s whole life was work. He had a retail store in Ossining, New York, and I mean, he was down there at 6:15 every morning. The store didn’t open until 9, but he hadda be down there. That’s all he knew. Peter Falk
If I don’t get enough sleep, my brain gets fatigued, and the voice suffers. If I’m doing some retail work and trying to read and record legal copy, I start sounding like I had a few too many the night before. Roger Craig Smith
It was easy for me in my bathrobe to provide really great customer service. As an introvert, it’s really much easier to do than when standing in a retail store. Sophia Amoruso
I do think that in order for a company to be interesting to the investment community, there needs to be a plan; there needs to be a bigger retail footprint. There needs to be this idea – DNA, lifestyle, words I hate. Marc Jacobs
You can’t take up all the music bins at a CD retail outlet with Spice Girls CDs and leave nothing for the Joan Jett catalogue. Greg Graffin
If you’re a retail investor, you have set aside some of your hard-earned money for investment or to create a nest egg, for your kids or family. Vito Fossella
When you bring in multi-brand retail items into the country, you’re not just bringing the products, but you’re also harming local manufacturers. Narendra Modi
I mean, our primary businesses in wholesale pipelines, utilities, retail, were all doing extremely well. Kenneth Lay
I’ve worked everywhere. I worked in a warehouse packing surf supplies, a restaurant washing dishes, in retail, and I was a ‘sandwich artist’ at Subway. Margot Robbie
What we have is a pay structure that, on basic wages, is higher than market rate, as a general statement. When you look at other forms of retail, whether they be food or non-food, we pay more. If you look at our health care benefits, we pay a lot more. Steven Burd
You can compare the retail business to basketball. You have to have a plan, you have to hustle, you have to rely on each other, and there’s a scoreboard on the wall. Doug McMillon
Although the number of manufacturing jobs in the United States has stagnated, dropping 12 percent from a high in the early 1980s, the number of retail jobs has risen 43 percent. Bill Dedman
There’s a game called Checkout where there’s grocery items and it’s how much you think the manufacturer’s suggested retail price is and we add up your total, then your total has to be within $2 of the regular total. I don’t think I could ever win that game. Drew Carey
Most of my friends from college became dental hygienists or went into retail, a lot went into sales. They all started getting married and having kids and buying homes and I was still living like a college student. Patricia Heaton
Some people see Black Friday as a much-needed break for their wallet. I see it as retail outlets showing the customers the full weight of their contempt. The frenzy to buy cheap crap from China, the human downgrade of people fighting with each other over items they can probably live without, to me, is an insult. Henry Rollins
The ventures that keep things light and fun, easy to understand, that have a compelling story, a sexy retail product, will have an easier time getting people to rally around them and contribute. A start-up doing something that’s difficult to communicate or doesn’t offer any kind of retail product will have a tougher go at it. Jessica Jackley
I’m thrilled to be joining Gap Inc., a company that understands the importance of integrating technology and retail in ways that improve the lives of its customers. Padmasree Warrior
I have a feeling that there is a gap in the food retail market – a niche below some of the current budget operators such as Aldi and Lidl. Stelios Haji-Ioannou
Auctions typically are an opportunity for you to be able to acquire what you’re looking for at a lower price; typically, the auctioneer sets the opening price at much lower than the retail price and certain interest develops and as more people come in it drives the price up. Alexander Gilkes
Going forward, we are mindful of the challenges we face in the competitive retail landscape, but we have demonstrated that our concept of building compelling brands that focus on the customers’ lifestyles can produce superior results. We will not waver from that concept. Richard Hayne
I’m in the retail business, not the circus business. Philip Green
I like loud music. I like music that fills my ears. I’m just going to pull out my iPod and see what we got here. We’re always interested in new bands because we have a retail store in northern California. I think it’s got to be happy. Tyler Florence
A guy named Charlie Beacham was my first mentor at Ford. He taught me the importance of the dealers, and he rubbed my nose in the retail business. Lee Iacocca
Comedy historians take note: this Gottfried character doesn’t have the best eye for detail – and, for a Jew, he doesn’t have the best eye for retail, either. Gilbert Gottfried
In disciplines as disparate as baseball, financial services, trucking and retail, people are realizing the power of data to help make better decisions. Paul DePodesta
My dad had a retail business in Leavenworth, Kansas, and there’s a whole bunch of prisons there, so it was a backdrop of my childhood, these ominous prisons sitting off the road. Eric Stonestreet
Maybe I was born to be a merchant, maybe it was fate. I don’t know about that. But I know this for sure: I loved retail from the very beginning. Sam Walton
The reality is that business and investment spending are the true leading indicators of the economy and the stock market. If you want to know where the stock market is headed, forget about consumer spending and retail sales figures. Look to business spending, price inflation, interest rates, and productivity gains. Mark Skousen
Joining forces with Cardinal Health supports Kinray’s mission to help retail independent pharmacies serve as an integral provider of care for our evolving health care system. Stewart Rahr
My mom used to work for Coach and Louis Vuitton, in retail. So, I’ve always been around it. I’ve always had that connection. Always. Travis Scott
Product downsizing in the face of inflation in order to maintain retail price points has long been used by food companies, notably manufacturers of candy. John Quelch
