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Commentary and Discussion From the Retail Community
CEO Talks The Talk and Walks The Walk
Best Buy’s chief executive, Brad Anderson, has taken a highly unusual action. What is your reaction to his turning over stock options with a value up to $7.5 million to…
Best Buy Transformation Starts At The Bottom
Steven Roorda, an analyst with American Express, says Best Buy is going in a distinctly different direction than any of its main competitors. “There’s nobody in the category that’s doing…
Ethnic Assortment and Merchandising Still Present Significant Challenges
When it comes to retail, people develop relationships with people, not supermarket brands. And yet, in chain service departments, where ethnic consumers typically connect with store personnel and where relationships…
Sears Tries To Cut Its Way To Profitability
The chairman and chief executive officer of Sears, Alan Lacy, has sent an email to headquarters personnel advising them to find ways to reduce expenses as the company continues to…
L.L. Bean Sues Over Pop-Ups On Its Site
L.L. Bean has filed a lawsuit for trademark infringement against Nordstrom, J.C. Penney, Atkins and Gevalia alleging pop-up ads for those companies appeared when consumers visited the retailer’s web site…
Working For A Living (Not!) In Grocery Industry
Supermarket employees in the UK are paid substantially less than the average worker, according to research from the GMB union. Are supermarkets here in the U.S. and elsewhere paying enough…
Gap Steps Up To Protect Workers
Last week’s release of a 40-page report by Gap Inc. on the working conditions in factories that produce clothes and accessories for sale in the retailer’s Gap, Old Navy and…
Target Ramping Up New Prototype Store
Target said last week it was planning to ramp up the introduction of its newest prototype store, dubbed P2004. The format increases the role of food to drive store traffic…
How 19,000 Beats Tens of Millions
Using 19,000 ACNielsen Homescan panelists as their guide, marketers are getting strong results through Consumer Direct, a joint venture between Yahoo! and ACNielsen. Are initiatives like Consumer Direct simply a…
Sears Does Better Alone
Sears’ chief executive officer, Alan Lacy, said the chain is accelerating its plans to add stand-alone Sears Grand and Great Indoors stores. Is the future of Sears in stand-alone stores?…
Brown & Cole’s CEO Breaks From The Pack
Craig Cole, chief executive officer of the Brown & Cole grocery chain, isn’t looking to join with Albertsons, Kroger and Safeway in playing hardball with the United Food and Commercial…
Retailer: 65 Percent Of Emails Were Junk
As Aksh Shinh tells it, after joining the arts and crafts retailer A.C. Moore as a senior system engineer in 2002, he quickly learned the chain’s executives and employees were…
Wal-Mart To Offer Second Doughnut Shop Option
They won’t be sold in the same stores, but Wal-Mart shoppers may soon have the choice of visiting a location based on the doughnut brand they prefer. Which food service…
The High Price Of Ice Cream
Numerous stories have been written on the escalating prices of dairy products and how consumers will react to having to pay more for items such as milk and ice cream…
Fair Trade Java To Get Storefronts
The British charity organization, Oxfam, and the UK coffee roaster, Matthew Algie, announced plans yesterday to launch a chain of fair trade coffee shops called Progreso. The parties plan to…
America Is Getting Video-Gamed Out
You couldn’t tell it by the amount of hours logged on televisions and computers each month in the typical suburban American home, but sales of video games are dropping –…
Wal-Mart Listens To Customers Online, Too
A Bloomberg news service report says analysts are looking for Wal-Mart to report a rise in first-quarter profits of 13 percent with a bottom line boost coming from new services,…
Does Your ‘American’ Brand Need Bilingual Labeling?
You ask if it’s necessary to have bilingual packaging when targeting Hispanics. Well consider, based on the latest 2002 Census estimates, that the Hispanic population has grown to 38.8 million,…
Stewart Seeks Get Out Of Jail Pass on Workers
Martha Stewart and her legal counsel have to be asking themselves, ‘With friends and business associates like Sharon Patrick, who needs enemies?’ What are your thoughts on the Martha Stewart’s…
Target To Summer In Hamptons
Target is going on location in New York again and this time, instead of setting up shop on a ship docked in Manhattan, it is going out to an inn…
FMI 2004: The Good, The Bad and The Low Carb
Last week’s FMI convention was a reminder of many things right about trade shows — there was widespread networking, hundreds of new products and services, and several very good workshops…
