“The meal kit business is becoming very crowded and I wonder about the long-term sustainability for many of the players in the space,” wrote Mark Ryski, CEO of The HeadCount Corporation. “While Chick-fil-A brings a slightly new twist to the meal kit market, I don’t see this changing the category dynamics.”  Read the article

Walmart has added commercial content to hundreds of titles that are now offered on VUDU for free streaming. But Walmart has a lot of work to do to catch up with Amazon and Netflix, according to Mark Ryski, CEO of HeadCount Corporation.” Read the article

Cycle Gear, a motorcycle parts and apparel retailer, is using data to drive business strategy, boost revenue and increase sales. The ability to boost conversion rate has also allowed Cycle Gear to optimize staffing, including additional hires to help more customers, which has boosted the customer experience.  Read the article

Today many brick-and-mortar retailers track store traffic and measure conversion, but the question is what they actually do to optimize their in-store conversion rates. The answer for many is not much. Learn more about the critical difference between Tracking Conversion versus Optimizing Conversion. Read the article

Cycle Gear, a specialty retailer of motorcycle parts and apparel with 140 stores in 38 states, is on a roll, hitting its goals, growing and opening new locations. The company is demonstrating how to increase comp sales quarter after quarter — all while keeping wage budgets in line.  Read the article

Despite tough headlines for many of the industry’s biggest retailers, one specialty retailer is bucking the trend in an industry plagued by indecision and distraction. It didn’t take long to see results. Just five months after the official launch of their new conversion program, Cycle Gear was already seeing great comp results, and by the end of the year, the company had their best Black Friday ever.  Read the article

Despite tough headlines for many of the industry’s biggest retailers, HeadCount and Cycle Gear are demonstrating what’s possible. Cycle Gear, a specialty retailer of motorcycle parts and apparel, increased quarter-over-quarter comp sales across its 140 store locations in 38 states while keeping wage budgets in line. Read the article

A recent deal with the e-com merce giant sent Sears’ stock price soaring by nearly 20%, but critics are skeptical about whether it will be a saving grace.  Mark Ryski, Author, CEO & Founder of HeadCount Corporation describes the move as one of  “desperation”. “After everything Sears has been through (and continues to go through) it’s hard to see how this is anything but a Lampert lark.”  Read the article

Many of America’s biggest retailers, under assault from Amazon.com Inc., have been slashing staff even faster than they have been closing stores, a dynamic that has left fewer clerks and longer checkout lines at remaining locations. Mark Ryski, Author, CEO & Founder of HeadCount Corporation contributes to an important Wall Street Journal article on why retailers should stop slashing staff and how critical it is to be staffing to traffic not sales transactions.  Read the full article: Retail’s Other Problem -Too Few Clerks in the Store or visit the WSJ web site.

Special to Financial Post from Mark Ryski.  In 2003, I made the jump from a career as a vice-president of a software company to being an entrepreneur.  It occurred to me that, in part, most retailers didn’t see the value in what I was offering because very little had ever been said about it.  My next challenge was to figure out how to write a book and get it published – how hard could that be?   The only problem with a ‘Book Strategy’ is that you actually need to write a book. Read the article