104 | Business World Magazine |
March 2014
tomer, and, once a client gives the go-ahead
and a purchase order is awarded, a stepladder
of stages that include brainstorming, con-
cept development, design and revision will
climax with a store-ready end product.
Lead time for products coming fromChi-
na is 12 weeks. For U.S.-made products, it’s
four to six weeks.
“That is one of our strong competitive ad-
vantages,” Filippone says. “We are very quick
and built so flexible.”
Insight’s busy season of March through
October runs as a prelude to the retail sec-
tor’s make-or-break fourth quarter, which
brings additional pressure to adhere to time-
lines as customers make plans to revamp for
the annual holiday rush. An additional skill
set that’s been developed, Filippone says,
is helping those same entities maintain rel-
evance in the face of increasing e-commerce
options.
“Retailing is struggling because it’s fac-
ing the fierce competition of a beast called
the Internet,” he says. “Online sales are going
up and taking more margins and more cus-
tomers off the retailers’ plate. There’s no way
that we can help them lower their prices, but
there are studies that indicate that a custom-
er is retained by how a store is built and how
a product is displayed.
