Mōd is a network of (mostly) independent consultants who have several things in common. We all served as successful retail executives for world-class retailers — up to the Senior Vice President level; devoted our careers to the fashion and specialty retail sector; and have strong work ethics and high standards.
We often start projects with a business and/or brand strategy, followed by related functional strategies and plans. As Mōd’s founder Ken Hewes has nearly 30 years of top-tier strategy consulting and executive experience, helping companies such as Coach, NIKE, Stuart Weitzman, Makro SHV, and Victoria’s Secret grow in both the U.S. and globally.
To help develop related functional strategies and execution plans, we employ specific functional expertise — merchants for merchandising initiatives, real estate executives for real estate execution, and so on. We typically will draw from both the Mōd network and internal company executives. Sometimes we’ll bring in other consultants (or other firms) to ensure the best-in-class assistance our network may lack and our clients deserve.
This model allows us to address a broad array of business and functional strategies in a flexible manner, and assures you get world-class expertise from executives who know how to work seamlessly within your organization.
Growth strategy
- Brand
- Business Model
- Customer
- Product
- Channel
Delivery
- Product Development
- Merchandising
- Merchandise Planning
- Supply Chain
- Digital Marketing and CRM
- Promotion Strategy
Store execution
- Real Estate Strategy
- Store Design
- Store Operations
- Integrated Store Technology
- Visual Merchandising
- Customer Engagement
Ecommerce
- Strategy
- Economic Model
- Site Design
- Merchandising
In addition, Mōd recently added two new cross-functional practice areas that we believe will profoundly impact retailer performance:
Speed
A new resource, Bob Gsanger, was one of the architects of L Brands’ speed program. For the merchandise in this program (about a third of total sales), inventory turned 80% faster, full-ticket sell-thru’s were over 90%, and realized margin increased by 700+ basis points. Moreover, traffic, conversion and transactions sizes all grew as customers responded to the increased fashion and newness in stores enabled by the program.
Performance marketing
Another new resource is Jim Thompson, who was VP of Performance Marketing for American Eagle Outfitters, where he helped drive the company’s omni-channel initiative, launched its single-view of the customer strategy, transformed digital marketing, and relaunched a mobile program to drive an estimated 60% increase in customer engagement. Additionally, Jim spent 15 years at L Brands, where he successfully implemented this approach at Victoria’s Secret and Express, among others.