Retail is Hard book will be available in Spring 2026
Retail is hard for a simple reason.
Missed demand doesn’t announce itself.
Sales data shows what happened.
It rarely shows what almost happened. That gap is where opportunity lives.
Why This Problem Exists
As retail businesses scale, complexity increases faster than visibility.
Teams make reasonable decisions. Dashboards explain outcomes. Post-mortems describe results.
And still, something feels off.
Not because people failed.
Not because systems broke. But because certain signals were never designed to surface.
The Way We See It
Most organizations look at performance.
This work looks at intent.
Where customers wanted to buy.
Where conversion quietly broke down.
Where decisions made sense individually, but compounded collectively.
The data already contains these signals.
They just don’t rise to the surface on their own.
What This Is Really About
Retail Is Hard isn’t built around certainty.
It’s built around attention.
The belief that what doesn’t show up in reports can still shape results, and that seeing clearly is often more valuable than acting quickly.
Who This Resonates With
This perspective tends to resonate with leaders who:
- Run complex retail businesses
- Trust their data, but question its completeness
- Feel performance doesn’t tell the full story
- Value clarity before action
If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone.
Michael Lewis, Founder
Michael Lewis has spent over 20 years inside retail businesses across multiple categories, watching the industry move faster, grow more complex, and demand more precision with every season.
Over time, what became discouraging wasn’t the work itself, but how often real demand was missed. Not because teams weren’t capable or data wasn’t available, but because the systems designed to measure performance rarely showed where customers wanted to buy but couldn’t.
Retail Is Hard wasn’t conceived as a business.
It emerged as a mindset.
A recognition that as retail scaled, the gap between what sold and what could have sold widened. That missed demand didn’t show up as a failure. It blended into normal performance, shaped future plans, and quietly capped results.
Michael’s work focuses on that gap.
Looking at existing sales and inventory data through a merchant lens to surface demand that never had a chance to convert, and the decisions that followed from not seeing it.
Retail Is Hard exists to give leaders language, perspective, and visibility into what performance reports alone don’t surface, especially at scale.