LPRC - Episode 6 – University of Florida’s Retail Center & Retail Education Programs

Episode Date: May 14, 2018

The post Episode 6 – University of Florida’s Retail Center & Retail Education Programs appeared first on Loss Prevention Research Council.

Hi everyone, welcome back to Crime Science, the podcast made possible by the Loss Prevention Research Council. In this podcast, we explore helpful topics about preventing crime and loss, the science behind these efforts, and we'll hear real-world examples from loss prevention and asset protection practitioners and other industry professionals as well. In this episode, we have Dr. Reed Hayes of the LPRC, Tom Meehan of Control Tech, and our special guest, Bessie Goodman of the University of Florida. And they will be discussing the University of Florida's Miller Retail Center and its retail education programs. Welcome everybody back to another episode of Crime Science, the LPRC podcast on everything retail, particularly evidence-based or science-based. And I'm joined by my co-host Tom Meehan of Control Tech and longtime retail practitioner as well. And today we're joined by

Betsy Goodman, who is the director of the David Miller Retail Center at the University of Florida, part of the Warrington College of Business. And what I'd like to do is, if we might, go ahead and start, Betsy, if you could just give us a kind of a brief bio, a summary of your retail career and how you ended up at the University of Florida. Well, thank you for allowing me to do this. I am a career in retail for about 25 years. I started my career with Lord & Taylor in Manhattan and was then transferred out to Miami for my own store. Then was recruited by Macy's. I was with Macy's for eight years in human resources and operations.

And then most recently, before joining the university, I was with Saks Fifth Avenue in the Bell Harbor shops for nine years. I got this great opportunity 17 years ago to come to the University of Florida to work in the retail center. And we predominantly work with recruiters from various retailers across the country. And with the background that I have in HR, it's certainly been a great journey. Excellent. And I really wanted to ask you too, Betsy, can you tell us a little bit about the background of the Miller Retail Center and how it came about, what it's, how it operates, and what you do there? was approached by the dean of the business school, recognizing the fact that retail was growing immensely in the state of Florida, as well as the entire country. The idea of starting a retail center where we could educate students about this fantastic industry, educate them, advise them, and then more importantly, help them get placed in internships and jobs upon graduation.

We've evolved through the years and taken on many different faces. But at this time, what's really interesting from the influence from the retail center, from what we've accomplished through the years, right now in the College of Business, one in five students are actually entering into the retailing industry, which that was not a number we could talk about in the past five years. That's great background. And I know I worked back in the day, if you will, a lot with Professor Dr. Weitz. Betsy, what can you tell us about Dr. Weitz and how he came to the University of Florida and all his contributions to retailing,

particularly from a research standpoint, and, of course, the center. So when the center gets started, of course, in this type of situation, there's always a need for academia to begin this type of center and to sponsor the center. So Dr. Weitz was brought in to start the center, and it got started literally with Dr. Weitz. And through the years, we've grown, developed, and he has written the book on retail management systems, which is one of the widely used retail books in the country right now across college campuses, and is obviously used at the University of Florida. He retired from the retail center and from the university several years back. And so now we've taken on a different direction. But again, our focus being placing students in

the retailing industry. And I can tell you, Betsy, just from my perspective, by the way, on Dr. Weitz was back in 1989, I was at an ISC, International Security Conference, and I was walking through the aisles and I was approached by Bill Zalad, who's just passed away. And he was the editor of Security Magazine. And I had written a couple of articles on retail loss prevention. And Bill approached me and said, look, I've seen your articles in Security Management, ASIS's magazine. And he said, you know what, I'd like to see, are you interested in maybe doing a study? Is there a need for a study on retailing from a loss prevention asset protection standpoint? And I said, well, I believe actually there really is, right? At that time, we had Ernst and Winnie, it was called, and so on.

And they had done an annual survey on retailing, and it talked a little bit about shrink. But it was really geared, written by and for auditors and accountants, CFOs to a certain extent. But it really, you could tell from reading their reports, while it was helpful, it wasn't written by anybody with any kind of expertise or knowledge about retail loss prevention. So we plotted and schemed a little bit. He would help us find a sponsor. He would publish the document. I reached out to the University of Florida because I had just read they'd hired at UF in the College of Business an eminent scholar.

He got an eminent scholar chair, which means you're a million-dollar man. They have an endowment set up matched by the state of Florida, over a million, and from the Wharton School. And that was Professor Dr. Bart Weitz. He had been a PhD, I believe, out of Stanford. He was coming in, and I just took a gamble, and I called up, and he got on the phone and I told him who I was and what I was trying to do was start a survey would he have any interest in helping me pull this thing off and be involved and he said absolutely get up here at your earliest convenience and he was that kind of guy here he is this very very eminent scholar and scientist. And so I raced up to Gainesville out of the Orlando area at that time, and we put this survey together.

We put it out, and we had several hundred retailers respond to that. That was the National Retail Security Survey, and we got Centromatic at the time to provide an annual grant. Dr. Richard Hollinger, Dick Hollinger, came in as a criminologist and began working on the study with us as well on an annual basis. And that, of course, the NRSS, National Retail Security Survey, remains in force today with Dr. Hollinger driving that thing. I think ADD or whatever it was, I kind of moved on to other research from the survey, but that's kind of a quick history. And the contributions of Dr. Weitz are amazing. And when I went to get my PhD, the college that I was getting it from asked that I get Dr. Weitz on my doctoral committee.

I said, well, look, I think we can get somebody else. He's a pretty busy guy. They said, no, we want him. I had a meeting with him. He said, you're in. Let's go. I'll be your – like, wait a minute. So anyway, a lot of fond memories.

Dr. White's, what he's built there in the center and what you're running is amazing. I think one last quick question. I'm going to go over to Tom here. But Betsy, what's the importance of a retail center or retailing center? And I understand at UF, of course, it's in the College of Business versus many other places that might have some focus on retailing in some way. What does that look like? So there are not a lot of retail centers in colleges across the country. We are unique in that we are housed in the College of Business, as you mentioned.

Texas A&M also has a retail center housed in the College of Business. And Texas A&M also has a retail center housed in the College of Business. Most other retail centers are housed out of the College of Consumer Sciences because back in the day, it was part of the School of Home Economics. Why I feel we are unique being in the College of Business is that we're training our students not about fashion, not about textiles, but about the business side of retail. And I think that is one of the main reasons why we have such great success with our students here at the University of Florida. And again, the sole purpose through the classes we teach is to let students know that retail isn't

the person behind the cash register, although we've probably, most of us have done that in our career, that there are some really pretty exciting highly paid and highly responsible executives within the retailing industry so it's our job in the retail center to get that across to students to help support them guide them advise them and then to ultimately place them within the industry yeah betsy i'd like to thank you for joining i think some of the listeners here will directly be able to relate to this. And I think some of the points you just covered are very relevant to the almost in retail, both in operations, IT, and asset protection. So if you were talking to a new student today, what would you say would be the main or most important thing they would gain from the program and the retail center? The main message I give to students across the campus is, whatever you have a passion

in, you can do it in the retailing industry. You like to plan parties? Well, guess what? Somebody actually plans the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and gets paid a lot of money for it. So it's really finding what the student's passion is and then kind of directing them into opportunities that actually exist. And we're able to do this through several of the classes that we teach at UF. So I teach a leadership, retail leadership series where for 13 weeks in a given semester, it's taught both fall and spring. I bring in speakers from various retailers at various levels and I have them present about a day in a life of so that students can see, you know, they actually have lawyers in retail. You know, they actually have industrial engineers in retail. And by the time the class is over, I have at least a couple of students that will come up to me and say, you

know, I had no idea that this was retail. So the classes really are able to validate, you know, what we're telling students behind the scenes. And I think through the years, through us being a retail center and the classes that we're teaching right now, one in five business students are placed in the College of Business. And that's pretty astronomical. And we're pretty proud of that. Wow. I think, you know, what you said hits home with me because I know that in my career, I did a lot of different things. And I think that's probably the best advice I've ever heard about retail and the broadness of what's available. Speaking of, we're speaking a lot about the students. What does it, you know, the center and the program offer for retailers? What are retailers looking to get out of it? And when it comes to retailers, what role do the retailers themselves play in the program or in the center? So when retailers come to a college campus, any college campus, to recruit students, they're usually going through the Career Resource Center.

The Career Resource Center on a college campus deals with all students, all majors, all companies. The Retail Center really hones in on recruiters from the retailing industry that want great students. So the Retail Center acts as almost a concierge service. So the sponsors that we work with, we sit them down, we ask them a bunch of questions regarding, you know, who do you want to hire? When do you want to hire them? In what capacity? And based on those answers, we then build in a strategy of ways in which they can get in front of our best students. So we will allow them to come into our classes and speak. We get them in front of some of our retail organizations. We've produced recently a new program which has provided soft skills for some of our retailing students, the best of the best. And the retailers get a chance to meet those folks and spend some time with them. So it's really providing concierge services where they're getting in front of our best students.

students, and through all of our advising, the other thing they get is our advising to our students, because we know our students and we know the companies we work with, we're better able to match them up. And what we have found is that has then enabled the retailers to see a longer service employee rather than better retention, because the match was made or the better match was made in the very, very beginning. So I understand that there is an annual conference related to the program and center. What can you tell our listeners about that? Yes, I'm very, very excited because we've made some changes to our conference, which I think is really going to be advantageous for the retailing industry as well as the University of Florida. So this is a conference we started 28 years ago,

and it's really bringing C-suite retailers speaking to other retailers that are coming to the conference to learn best practices and just kind of network. And for 28 years, we've hosted it in Orlando or in Tampa. And so we made some major changes to it. So we decided to take 2018 off. We decided to change the date. So it was in June. And anyone familiar with Florida who wants to come to Florida in June. So we decided to change the date to March. So in 2019, on March 27th and 28th, which is a Wednesday and Thursday, we are actually hosting the event here on campus. Students will be in session, unlike the month of June. So the major benefit will be that retailers are going to be able to network. And I'm doing this deliberately now where they can network

with some of the retailing best students at the university. And if someone was interested in attending the conference, how would they go about finding out more information? We just sat with our communications department in the College of Business

and probably within the next month, you'll be able to go to our website and actually register for the conference. It is $395 for two days, and that includes all the food as well as a reception. And again, we're going to give an opportunity for retailers to bring their recruiting banners, line up on the side of the room, and speak to our students. Students, by the way, will be allowed to attend for free, and they're going to realize that this is a great recruiting opportunity for them as well. So I feel really confident that the ballroom, which has just been renovated here

at the university, will be completely filled. And we've got some exciting lineup already. And we are going to be trickling out all of the speakers over the next six to eight months. Fantastic. I wanted to ask you, Betsy, too, who else is on your team at the UF Retail Center? And what are sort of they working on? You know, I view our retail center very similar to what retail is going through today. Probably about a year and a half ago, we had to make some tough decisions on the future direction of our retail center. And although it was very tough through the years, I think we kind of dabbled in some areas that really were was not helping the center for a lot of different reasons. So right now we are rebuilding our team.

We have the executive director, myself and our office manager, along with we have a director for advising that sits in the retail center. So we're beginning now to rebuild as we continue our new mission. So, again, what's exciting about our retail center right now is that we have an opportunity to go forward in a direction that's going to better suit the retailing industry. to go forward in a direction that's going to better suit the retailing industry. One thing I want to touch on, Betsy, I appreciate that, is how you have allowed and encouraged our team to interface with your students. And like you mentioned, that cashiering and some of these other roles that most people identify as being part of retail are critical, but that there are a lot of other things going on. And so you've allowed me to come in there and work with your students in an interactive way to help them understand all the different types of theft and fraud

and even occasional violence that affect the retail environment, the retail business. What are your thoughts on this loss prevention or asset protection component of retail? That's a great point. I personally feel, having worked in the industry and worked mostly in stores, that retail goes way beyond the person behind the register, as I mentioned earlier. So our conference reflects that as well. So in my classes, I always bring in various speakers, as I mentioned earlier. So our conference reflects that as well. So in my classes, I always bring in various speakers, as I mentioned, so that students can see, wow, you know, I'm

getting a criminal justice major. I didn't realize I could do that in retail. So it just puts that little seed in their mind. The conference as well will reflect retailing as an industry beyond just the brick and mortar. I view retail as any organization that sells goods or services. That includes restaurants. That includes golf courses. That includes automotive. I mean, the list goes on and on. So some of our speakers are going to be coming out of the restaurants, coming out of the PGA. We've got a couple people talking about terrorism and retail. So the variety of topics is going to be helpful to anybody in the industry in any capacity. Excellent. Let me ask you, you do a lot of interesting things with your students, and you've got different courses. You have an annual Big Apple visit. And can you tell us a little bit about that? What are you trying to achieve? How do you pull it off?

What do the students get out of that adventure? And, you know, it sounds like besides a lot of fun. We now have a retail minor that has gone into place about four years ago. Prior to that minor, we only had two classes that taught retail. So we had to be very creative in how we got our word out about the industry. We had an idea, you know, we've got great connections all over the country. I actually lived in New York, so I was familiar with the city. And I said, well, why don't we put a tour together? Let's see how many students would be interested in going. So we've been doing this now 10 years. The tour is done over spring break in March. In March, it was sold out. And so now I'm actually putting a second tour together,

which we're going to be going in a week and a half. And this is the first year we've done that tour. And we already have close to 20 students. So I feel today the learning process is just not happening in the classroom. It's happening through these experiences. We are now going to be doing, I've added a new tour to Atlanta, to the Atlanta Merchandise Mart, where we're going to be able to take a tour and see the three buildings and see what going to market is all about. So that's another experience that the students are going

to be able to participate in. So again, you know, learning goes way beyond just the classroom. And so these are some areas that we're able to provide students that experience. That's fantastic. And I know, you know, here we're at the LPRC, we continue to grow. We're at 53 retail chains plus all their divisions and banners under them. It's just incredible growth. But what we're hearing from every one of them, of course, is omni-channel, multi-channel, and so on. How are you and the center and the professors, instructors that you all have involved in the program, how do you guys keep up and address this dramatic and rapidly changing industry? Yes, it is rapidly changing. I think, though, the misconception and certainly online or omni-channel is very important for retailers.

But even today, less than 10% of all retail sales are happening online. The focus right now is, and again, although that's important and it will grow, right now what retail is focusing on is how can we enhance the in-store experience. That also includes how can we enhance the experience online. But as you see big stores closing in malls, it's interesting to watch what's going into that space because for the most part, it's a lot of experiences because that's what people want. They're not just going to the mall to go to one department store for one thing. They're going to the mall and they want to have some more experiences. So it'll be interesting to watch how retailers implement that into their

stores. And I think a great example through technology is the Rebecca Minkoff store in New York City. If you're not had a chance to take a look at it, all of her merchandise in that store through a partnership with eBay has RFID. So when you walk into the fitting room, every item that you bring into that fitting room immediately comes, shows up on the mirror because it knows exactly what you have in your hand. And it even knows the color and it knows the size. So if you're trying it on and you need a new size, you just press a different size and the picture of a sales associate comes up on the wall and that sales associate brings it. Again, the technology knows exactly what's in the fitting room.

So also what appears on the mirror is suggested items that match what you brought in based on what they know is in the store. In the technology, you can also adapt the lighting in the fitting room to adapt where you're actually going to wear this outfit. Oh, and by the way, if while you're in the fitting room, you need a coffee or water or a glass of champagne, you just press a button and the sales associate brings it in. That's the type of experience that customers are looking for. Because you could buy that Rebecca Minkoff hearse probably anywhere online. But if I can go and have a great experience, that's where I'm going to be more apt to spend my money. That's good stuff.

And we're trying to keep up. And it's interesting. I had a really neat meeting today in your retail center with UF faculty over in IS. But he specializes in the retail space and looks at big data and is doing amazing things with in-store and omni-channel, particularly online, and how the two support each other and how we were going through and he was explaining how early on the research as online started coming about and became reality that everybody was racing to say, wait, we need to make our online space as comparable as we possibly can to our in-store experience. And now they realize, wait, now it's all evolved to, wait a minute, we need to make our in-store experience more like the online experience. There's broader SKU offerings. There's much more dramatic ways that you can evaluate the merchandise across SKUs that you may not even have in the store and do these things.

And now the final part of this current evolution is how the two interface and support. Part of this current evolution is how the two interface and support. If you close a physical store down, that actually starts to damage your online sales, doesn't help your online sales because they can't go in your store and evaluate merchandise. They can't return items to the store. They can't get a real physical feel for that. And so that hurts your brand in some cases. And so they're racing to figure out using data and experiments what they can do. Is there any thoughts on this dramatic interface between Omnichannel that they're all mutually

supportive? So retailers today want to make sure that a customer can purchase an item anywhere, anytime, and on any device. That's what retailers are really focused on and moving toward. But one thing, too, that I think public thinks that retail is going to be dead soon is that as a country, we've been overstored for years. And so what's happening right now is that companies are looking at upcoming leases or unproductive spaces, and they're making a financial decision and a right financial decision to close the store, get rid of the space, and move to areas that are going to be more productive. So when stores opened up back in the 80s, and you had to sign a 25-year lease or 30-year lease, that area today may not even be a populated area. And as retailers, you know now, writing leases a lot less than 30 years, a lot less than 20 years. So, you know, real estate is being more adaptable to what's happening in the industry.

So the closing of stores, I think people feel that retail is going through an apocalypse and it's not. It's just changing. And to me and what I tell our students is right now, this is probably one of the most exciting times in my 35 years in retail to get into the industry because these students nowadays are all about change. And so they get what's going on and this change excites them. You know, it's interesting you say that, Betsy. We had one of our newest members, Amazon, here in our innovation lab in Gainesville the other day. Amazon here in our innovation lab in Gainesville the other day. And their big emphasis while they're interested in our emergency operations center, SOC lab, and then what's going on, supply chain protection working group and so forth, brick and mortar

was the main topic of conversation with our team and the Amazon team. And, you know, and of course, with their acquisition of Whole Foods and who knows what else is coming and the Go stores and stand-up stores, pop-ups and Kohl's and so forth. Like you say, you see this wild gesturing going on in the United States, Europe and Asia where, okay, wait, we need stores, we need online, we need stores, we need online. How do we tie them together? And so I agree. It's uncomfortable. It's turbulent. It's confusing even, but it's reality and pretty exciting. Yeah, definitely. I think the disruption that we're experiencing in the industry is what's making it exciting. And so for anyone particularly that is creative, likes to take on major challenges, this is the wave to be involved in right now.

So Tom, I'll go back over to you. And I know you've got some other some good thoughts and questions. Yeah, I mean, I enjoyed the conversation. I think one of the things that I often talk about is technology. And I was fortunate that I started in retail before dot com, but really grew up during the dotcom area and during the Omnichannel and now the Unify's commerce piece. So I really appreciate all the comments and I know our listeners will as well. When it comes to Omnichannel and when it comes to kind of the evolution, and that's what I say, the evolution of retail or the adjustment of retail, or when students are looking at the program, are there courses or workshops that

help them understand that specifically that are offered? Specifically online? Yeah, or the omni-channel experience and what's going on in retail. Yeah, yes, we do have courses that are specifically geared toward that, not necessarily out of the retail center. Our classes are more broad. So again, when a student finishes one of our retail classes, it runs the gamut from what is retail all the way to, you know, site selection, you know, fashion merchandising, buying, planning, so that they see the array of opportunities within the industry. And it's usually our courses that we teach are usually in their sophomore and junior year, which gives them then an opportunity to get excited about the industry,

then possibly get an internship, and then later on get into the industry. But yeah, that is an area that we do spend a lot of time with. And we have a very broad listener base of the podcast, as well as the membership pool involves all different levels of retailers and we have staff level folks involved all the way up to you know very senior c-suite level people and i'm often asked the question about you know what path folks should take and so being that you have a path outside of asset protection and investing in technology, if you were talking to someone who's looking to get into retail or really is in the very early stages of selection of a major,

what are some of the core classes or workshops that would be offered through the program or the center? So as I mentioned, we have a leadership series class that is a Friday class. The students have lunch with the speaker. And that's a great opportunity to get an understanding, a better understanding of the industry. And again, that's taught in the fall and the spring. And then we also teach a retail marketing and management class. That's the class where it is an entire semester long. It's just not one day a week. And it really dives into the industry so that they could see all aspects of it. You know, it's funny, we very often will get very young students into our center. And when asked, well, what do you want to do? You know, they'll with a smile on the face, I want to be a buyer, I want to be a planner, because they think that's, you know,, well, oh, no, those skills are not

what I'm really interested in. And then that helps us, as funny as that sounds, that really then helps us to be able to gear them in the right direction of where they should consider the industry. Yeah, I can tell you, I worked at Bloomingdale's and I didn't know what a buyer actually did until I got into the corporate office. And it was very different than the perception I had. So it was kind of the, it was the job that everybody in the store level, you know, the younger folks, it was the summer job. That was the job they thought they were going to come back to. And I was in New York City area.

So, so many people went to the FIT and had fashion. And that was a kind of a common thing. And it was eye-opening for me personally what actually went on behind the scenes. So, you know, for our listeners, again, our base is very mixed. If someone wants to get involved in the retail center from a sponsorship standpoint or to get involved that isn't a student that are past that, how would they do that? Well, they could contact me directly. or pass that, how would they do that? Well, they could contact me directly. My email is Betsy, B-E-T-S-Y dot Goodman at Warrington, W-A-R-R-I-N-G-T-O-N dot U-F-L dot E-D-U.

And I can have a conversation about the interest in getting involved. I bring in probably close to 50 speakers a year, so I'm always looking for those that are interested in perhaps getting in front of students. As I know, a lot of C-level executives are interested, and this is a great way to expose them to the retail center, expose themselves to our campus and our students as well. As I mentioned earlier, there's not a lot of retail centers in the country. And right now we probably work with about 25 partners. And it's not just retail. I think this also is indicative of what the industry is going through. We're not, we have sponsors that are not just department stores, but we have sponsors that are big data companies, restaurants.

So we are representative of what the industry really is. So if you want to get involved, we're always looking for new partners. We're always looking for great speakers. And, again, our work at the university, I think, has evolved through the years. And when you can say one in five business students are going into the industry, I think that speaks to the curriculum as well as to the staff at the retail center. What do some of those numbers look like, Betsy? How many of the students are involved in your retailing classes or take on internships in the retailing industry? That's a great question. And so last year, we actually took a deep dive in looking at that. So in the College of Business, there's roughly

4,000 students. We will graduate in the College of Business roughly 1,000 a year. We, through classes, through organizations, through advising, through internships, through placements, we touch about 1,880 students every year. Now, some of those may be overlapping, and some of them may not be in the College of Business, but we've been able to identify that we actually touch 1,880 students, and then we took a deeper dive in recognizing of the classes that we teach, 39% of the students in those classes are marketing majors. Fantastic. That's some big numbers. And I understand that the center over the last X amount of years has graduated literally hundreds and placed literally hundreds of students into

major retailers. And I've been out there and I can recall too that just she's gone back into operations, but the asset protection vice president at Target Corporation was a graduate here from the University of Florida as an example, and her husband as well. So I know I run into UF grads out there, many, many that came out of the center. Yeah, we like to bring back UF grads. So if there's any out there, please contact me. Again, I guess in closing that our retail conference that we've changed, we've got some really exciting things that are going to happen. And I would encourage any of you that have gone to the LPRC's conference to consider ours, which is in addition to consider, it's called Retail Smarter, and it will be at the

Reitz Union at the University of Florida's campus on Wednesday and Thursday, March 28th, 29th, 2019. Again, within the next month, six weeks, we're going to have full-blown promotion and PR coverage of the exciting event that we will host on our campus. And so with that, Betsy, I really, on behalf of the LPRC and my UF colleagues, and of course, Tom Meehan at Control Tech, and the whole staff here, our producer, Kevin Tran, thank you for coming on and being with us on Crime Science Podcast. And we wish everybody out there, have a great week. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for coming on and being with us on Crime Science Podcast. And we wish everybody out there have a great week. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.