Wednesday Tipsheet: Wmart’s New Focus: The Ad World | Aldi in SoCal | G.Mountain in MO
“Walmart’s New Cost-Cutting Target: The Ad World” by Jack Neff at Ad Age. “Having driven cost out of distributing goods for decades, Walmart has a newer vision: Driving waste out of advertising and media. And not just for itself. As Brian Monahan, VP-marketing of Walmart.com said in a talk at the Ad Age Digital Conference on Tuesday, the retailer hopes to do the same for its suppliers, too…” Read more
“Home Depot’s Director of Trend & Design Featured in Atlanta Magazine” by Mary Logan Bikoff. “As the director of trend and design for the Home Depot, Sarah Fishburne travels the world for inspiration…she works on everything from plants to paint colors, both designing proprietary brands and selecting from national labels.” Read more / See the pics
“Amazon Will Now Allow Returns Using Lockers” by Greg Bensinger at WSJ. “Amazon appears to be charging the same rate for returns through lockers as for drop-offs at UPS sites. Consumers have one business day to drop off their packages, which must be no larger than one cubic foot to fit in a locker, according to Amazon’s website.” Read more
“Sifting Through Walmart’s Big Tech Bets” by Kim Souza at The City Wire. “I don’t know how many different ways Wal-Mart can say it, invest in our platform and we will invest in you,” Spieckerman said of Wal-Mart’s request. “One hand washes the other. They want to see suppliers hand over the content they have created. Wal-Mart has already made the investments and suppliers can benefit if they turn over some of their assets in the form of user (and) shopper content.” Read more
“Supermarket chain Aldi buys Moreno Valley (SoCal) site for a headquarters” by Roger Vincent at LA Times. “Supermarket chain Aldi, which plans to open 650 new stores in the U.S. in the next five years, has acquired a 55-acre site in Moreno Valley where it will build its Southern California regional headquarters.” Read more
“How Ace Hardware painted itself a record year” (I-view with Chairman of Ace) by Kate MacArthur at Chicago Tribune. “Q. You credit your paint strategy for record sales in 2013. What was behind that?…Our goal is to take our market share of paint from under 4 percent to 10 percent within 10 years….We’re into our second year and last year, we were at 6.4% share.” Read the full interview
“Family Dollar Adds 400 New Food Items in Each of Its 8,000+ Stores “ “As part of the new food rollout, television personality, best-selling author and chef, Pat Neely, will participate in several special events to spread the word about the great values customers can find in-store.” Read the release
“Appeals court allows former Wal-Mart employee’s gender bias lawsuit to proceed” by Maria Halkias at Dallas News. “Stephanie Odle is still fighting her former employer, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., just as she vowed to do 15 years ago. The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals is allowing Odle, one of the original members of the class of women who sued Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club in 2001, to proceed with her own case against the retailer.” Read more
“Gander Mountain Opens First Missouri Store” by Lisa Brown at St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “Gander Mountain will open 23 new stores this year, up from a dozen last year, Mike Owens, the chain’s president and chief operating officer, told the Post-Dispatch during a tour of the new store Monday. More stores may be on the way locally, he said.” Read more
“Huffington Post Hit on Walmart: The Truth Behind Walmart’s Green Claims” by Stacy Mitchell. “So, how has Walmart so far escaped accountability for its environmental claims? Skillful public relations, mixed with just enough real action, is part of the answer. The other is that the environmental community initially gave Walmart room to make good on is promises. That’s starting to change, however…” Read more
“Random: How a secret iOS feature could change the Internet” by Ryan Bradley at Fortune. “FireChat is sneakily subversive and quite possibly the most important thing to happen to the Internet since international network hubs began to form in 1995…Think of a daisy chain, or an old-timey firefighter bucket brigade. One device connecting to another, maybe 20 feet away, and that one connects to another, maybe 10 feet away, and so on and so forth, the distances pile up, but the network remains, and each link is a link that strengthens the chain.” Read more
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