Keep an eye on Clare Rayner’s blog as she introduces the 10 steps to retail success over the next few weeks. The 10 steps are as below:

10-steps to retail success…

1. Your personal and business goals, your business mission
2. Your business positioning
3. Your ideal customer
4. Your product strategy and range planning
5. Your pricing and promotional strategy
6. Your channel and location strategy
7. Your customer engagement strategy
8. Your sourcing and supply chain strategy
9. How you plan and control your business
10. Your back office functions – taking care of HR, Legal, Finance and IT

Just in time for 2011 Consumer Electronics Show, Sears has launched a new social media initiative called the Sears Blue Blogger Crew. From the Sears blog.

What is the Sears Blue Blogger Crew?

The Sears Blue Blogger Crew is an opportunity for our peers (i.e. fellow gadget geeks) to share their knowledge and experience in the technology space with their readers and followers, as well as our customers. The Sears Blue Blogger Crew is a group of experts who will write about technology, trends and products that we carry here in the Sears Consumer Electronics Department! (NOTE/DISCLOSURE: For CES, Sears Electronics is covering travel costs + expenses for the bloggers in attendance, as well as providing each a small video camera.)

Currently the crew consists of five bloggers, Jenna Hatfield, lead blogger at Stop, Drop and Blog; Kris Cain, lead blogger for LittleTechGirl, Andru Edwards, CEO of Gear Live Media and lead blogger for Gear Live, Kelly Clay, a veteran blogger, works for Lockergnome, Barbara Rozgonyi, founder of the Chicago chapter of the Social Media Club, blogs at WiredPRWorks.

Great initiative as long as these bloggers remain neutral and not become the PR for Sears.

It’s been quite some time since I did my Interesting Retail Blogs post. You can get the old one’s here and here. Here are some more new blogs that are pushing great posts regularly.

• The  Blog  by  Retail  Minded
• Oracle’s Insight-Driven Retailing Blog
• RetailGeek
• Retail Prophet

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I guess it's becoming a habit to search for interesting Retail blogs. Here's three more additions to the ones I have pointed out before here and here.

Nikki Baird's Retail Tech Stories - From Nikki's brand new blog - "As consumers adopt technology, one of the first places they bring it is to the shopping experience. How do retailers, traditionally tech laggards, adapt? These are my experiences and stories from the front lines of this shifting landscape."

Retail Detail with Margaret Brennan - Margaret is a reporter with CNBC and writes on consumer spending and the retail industry.

Reuters Shop Talk - From the blog - "Working the retail beat track - who’s buying what, how much they’re paying, which retailers seem to be getting it right and which are looking to clear the shelves with discounted clearance sales."

Wow, Wal-Mart has started a new blog called Check Out. The blog is authored by Wal-Mart employees blogging on the topics of Gadgets,Games, Lawn & Garden, Movies and sustainability - almost as varied as the content of your shopping trolley. So far it looks to be a very decent effort. RSS Subscribed.

Came across couple of interesting Retail blogs:

RetailDesignDiva - RetailDesignDiva is a retail design blog. Thanks to Heather Strang for pointing me to the blog.

Retail Contrarian - Retail Contrarian is a blog by Doug Fleener and Matt Norcia of Dynamic Experience Group, a retail consulting firm in Lexington, MA.