AMPERAGE Marketing & Fundraising

One-Minute MarketerAre You Going to do Some Holiday Shopping at the Grocery Store?

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Are You Going to do Some Holiday Shopping at the Grocery Store?

According to CNN, “select” Hy-Vee grocery stores and shoe retailer DSW have teamed up to open mini shoe stores inside the grocery store. I had seen shoes for sale at a Hy-Vee near my home. What surprised me was that people were actually looking, trying on shoes and putting them into the cart with eggs, milk and bread.

Grocery chain Aldi and department store chain Kohl’s Corp. previously piloted an effort to locate the two stores next to each other. It seems retailers are moving from malls to locations where people congregate every week, and that is the grocery store. Can retailers increase traffic by attaching themselves to a grocery store or locating right inside the store?

Bill Jordan, chief growth officer at Designer Brands, told CNN that the shoe stores will feature a wall of shoes with 100 shoe styles and nearly 4,000 pairs of shoes. If someone finds a shoe they like, they can scan the QR code, order it online and have it delivered to their home or pick it up at the Hy-Vee location.

Technology and the coronavirus have caused rapidly changing consumer habits, and only rapid innovation will win the day. The economy and COVID-19 have challenged us all to be on our toes as preferences shift. Cheers to 2021 and all it will bring. Stay ready. 

Mark Mathis III is chief creative & strategy officer, partner and cofounder of AMPERAGE Marketing & Fundraising.

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Mark wrote his first direct-mail fundraising letter in 1981 for the University of Iowa Center for Advancement. The effort raised a few million dollars in undiscovered wills and legacy gifts. From that day forward Mark discovered a love of the big idea that moves the needle.

After 12 years at KWWL, Mark became a business owner as a co-founder of ME&V — rebranded as AMPERAGE in 2015. After 25 years of leading creative teams in video production, graphic design, PR, writing and web development, Mark transitioned out of ownership in 2021. Today he serves in an employee role as special projects consultant.

He is creatively ambidextrous — son of an artist and engineer — and famous for distilling complex ideas down to a few words and a few visuals. Mark is a writer. When he found that many nonprofits struggled with complex branding puzzles, he wrote the book, “NonProfit-NonMarketing .” He also wrote a novel called “Reenactment.”

Mark is an active blogger OneMinuteMarketer® with nearly 1,000 readers each week on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. One of his most popular YouTube videos is on “How to Look Good on Zoom.”

One of Mark’s fondest business memories was being named to INC 500 two times and attending the INC 500 conference with other winners. Mark is considered by some a Civil War expert (and that explains his novel). Mark also served as an adjunct professor in the business and in the communications departments at Wartburg College.

Mark is a graduate of the University of Iowa and is currently vice president of the University of Iowa Journalism and Mass Communications Advisory Board.

Mark is married to state Sen. Liz Mathis, and the two love to travel, even when it means being trapped by a volcano in the Czech Republic for three weeks.