Current situation and climate of The Children’s Place

This article discusses the current situation and climate of The Children’s Place, a leading children’s specialty clothing retailer in North America. It explores the company’s strengths, weaknesses, and recommendations for increasing its online presence.

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The Children’s Place
Student’s Name
7/9/2019

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Current situation and climate
The Children’s Place is the leading pure-play children’s specialty clothing retailer in
North America. The business offers fine quality products at value prices. It currently operates
971 stores in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It has 212 international points of
distribution open and functioned by its eight franchise partners in 20 countries. The company
also operates an online store and provides a wide variety of product ranging from apparel,
accessories to shoes of children (The Children’s Place, 2019).
The company delivers superior products to its customers and has adopted the strategy
to transform the business through inventory management and digital transformation. The
company operates its stores based upon the geographical location. It analyses customer
preferences and manages the staff to deliver maximum satisfaction to the customers (The
Children’s Place, 2019).
The company operates through various distribution channels and focuses on fleet
optimization to improve the productivity of the company. The company is planning to close
300 stores by the year 2020 to improve its productivity and engaging the customers through
an online platform (The Children’s Place, 2019).
Strengths
It is analyzed that the company enjoys strong brand recognition and charges value
prices for its high-quality products. The company is recognized as a first mover advantage
and delivers the latest products through its merchandising strategy. It delivers the products of
latest trends and provides an extensive range of products to deliver maximum satisfaction to
the customers. The company is able to create higher profits through its diverse revenue

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models and the transformation of the business through the use of digital technology. The low-
cost global sourcing allows the company to maintain a strong relationship with the suppliers
and deliver high-quality products to all its stores (Chaffey & Smith, 2017).
Weakness
Apart from the advantages, the company also faces some challenges in the successful
operation of the business. The increasing competition creates difficulty in managing the per
unit revenue and creates downward pressure on the profitability of the business. Through a
strong brick and mortar presence, the company is able to concentrate more on customer-
oriented services. The company faces the challenge of high cost in replacing the current
employees who have a high knowledge base regarding the functioning of the company. Due
to increasing digital transformation, the company faces the challenge of lower productivity
because they are not able to retain the interest of the customers. The shifts in customer
preferences create the challenge to retain the brand positioning in the minds of the customers
(Zhao & Zhou, 2015).
Increase in online presence
In accordance with my views, the company must reduce its brick and mortar presence
because of increasing online presence and the digital transformation in the current market
place. It is analyzed that through the e-commerce channel the company can engage the
customers and can deliver customer-oriented services. It will allow opening new market
opportunities and will help in developing the business model that expands the customer base
(Martins, Amorim & Almada-Lobo, 2018).
The company is focusing on fleet optimization because it will help in enhancing the
productivity of the company. The closing of the stores will allow the company to save its

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operating cost and develop more personalized services for the customers. It will not bind the
company to use limited storage space and will help in delivering more personalized services.
It is analyzed that the e-commerce operations has become the main platform for compatible
retail sales and the growing profitability (Martins, Amorim & Almada-Lobo, 2018).
It will help in keeping a close eye on the preferences of the customers and will allow
the company to reduce its inventory management cost. Increasing the e-commerce delivery
channel will allow attracting new customers and increase the profitability of the company. It
provides 24/7 service to the consumers and boosts the transactions of the company (Chaffey
& Smith, 2017).
Recommendations
To improvise the sales of the company it must focus on developing appropriate
analytics strategy that will allow in measuring the traffic of the customers and analyze the
changing preferences to deliver maximum satisfaction to the customers. Understanding of the
audience behaviour will allow the company to improvise its services and target the larger
audience by developing strong connectivity with the customers (Deng & Wang, 2016).
To improvise the online presence of the business the company must focus on
increasing brand awareness through the use of social networking strategies. Awareness on
social media websites will help in attracting the younger generations and in turn, increases
the customer base. It must focus on proper detailing of the pricing and information about the
products to make the customers aware and connect the customers (Chaffey & Smith, 2017).

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References
Chaffey, D., & Smith, P. R. (2017). Digital marketing excellence: planning, optimizing and
integrating online marketing. Taylor & Francis.
Deng, Z., & Wang, Z. (2016). Early-mover advantages at cross-border business-to-business
e-commerce portals. Journal of Business Research, 69(12), 6002-6011.
Martins, S., Amorim, P., & Almada-Lobo, B. (2018). Delivery mode planning for distribution
to brick-and-mortar retail stores: discussion and literature review. Flexible Services
and Manufacturing Journal, 30(4), 785-812.
The Children’s Place. (2019). Overview. Retrieved from: https://childrensplace.gcs-web.com/
The Children’s Place. (2019). Who we are. Retrieved from:
https://corporate.childrensplace.com/who-we-are/
Zhao, L., & Zhou, J. (2015). Analysis on the advantages and disadvantages of clothing
network marketing. International Journal of Business and social science, 6(4).