Wednesday Tipsheet: Target Closes 11 | Amazon Same-Day in Can. | Berkeley Taxes Soda

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“Target to Shutter 11 Stores” by Kavita Kumar at Star-Tribune. “It also swatted away an investment firm trying to buy shares on the cheap and started selling tchotchkes made by 3-D printers, latching on to one of the hottest things in high-tech…The 11 stores will be shuttered by Feb. 1, around the end of Target’s fiscal year. In May, it also closed eight stores.” Read more

 

…the List of Stores Target is Closing.  See the list of 11

 

“Berkeley, CA Passes Nations First Soda Tax” by Laura Mandaro at USA Today. “More than three-quarters of the votes cast were in favor of Measure D, according to the Alameda County Registrar of Voters. The measure will place a 1-cent-an-ounce tax on soft drinks. It only needed a majority of “yes” votes to pass.  In nearby San Francisco, city voters rejected a similar measure to tax sugary drinks.” Read more

 

“Former Dollar General CEO, David Perdue, Wins Georgia Senate Race” by Cameron McWhirter at WSJ. “With more than 50% of the vote, Mr. Perdue is on track to avoid a runoff –and avoid a Democratic pickup.” Read more (Subscription)

 

“GOP Win Boosts Prospects For Stalled Data Security Efforts” by Allison Grande at Law 360. “Republicans’ takeover of the U.S. Senate on Tuesday increases the chances that Congress will pass long-stalled data security and cyberthreat information-sharing legislation, with the measures likely to be narrower and more business-friendly than many Democrats would prefer.” Read more (Subscription)

 

Canada: “Amazon.ca raises stakes in same-day delivery service” by Marina Strauss at Globe & Mail. “Amazon.com Inc. is raising the ante in Canada’s e-commerce battle by offering same-day shipping in Toronto and Vancouver just as retailers head into the crucial holiday shopping season.” Read more

 

“Eurozone Retail Sales Plunge In September” by Dina Spector at Business Insider. “Eurozone retail sales fell by 1.3% between August and September, verses an expected drop of o.8% Eurostat said the decline is due to falls in the non-food sector and a 0.1% fall in”food, drinks, and tobacco.” Read more

 

Forbes: “With GOP Senate, Freer Trade Is Up First” by Tim Ferguson. “The trade universe is wide but Asia is the big ballgame. Whether it is the Trans-Pacific Partnership or a less grand agreement, the first move–ironically– is likely to be “fast track” trade-negotiating authority for the president…Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, stands to chair the Senate Finance Committee, a key trade bottleneck and he has talked a good trade game (just don’t threaten the Utah vitamin industry).” Read more

 

“Costco Eyes Location in Downtown Jamaica (NYC), Developers Say” by Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska at DNAInfo. “Chris Xu…who spent $22 million in cash to buy a large property in Downtown Jamaica, said he was recently approached by a Costco representative to discuss the possibility of opening a store on that lot, on Archer Avenue and Guy Brewer Boulevard…the deal on his property hit a sticking point after the company asked for 600 parking spaces for its customers.” Read more

 

36% of Americans “hate” the practice of shopping on Thanksgiving by Clare O’Connor at Forbes. “…while another 26% “dislike” it. A mere 12% “like or love” the trend of stores opening on this special day.” Read more

 

“Ethan Allen CEO Aims for a More Modern Touch” by James R. Hagerty at WSJ. “Farooq Kathwari, the 70-year-old chief executive of furniture maker and retailer Ethan Allen Interiors Inc. has survived wrenching changes in the industry, such as the continuing surge in low-cost imports that drove many of his former rivals out of the business.” Read the interview (Subscription)

 

“In the business of fruit, who’s really top banana?” by Claire Zillman at Forbes. “Specialty fruit in 2009 it was 2% of sales, now it’s 15%,” Frey says. “When you used to hear ‘specialty fruit,’ you’d think pineapple and mango. Now it’s guava and starfruit.” See the Top 5 selling fruits

 

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Eye-on-Retail is a daily tipsheet read by thousands of Retail Merchants & Executives every weekday morning. Eye-on-Retail is unique because it’s timely, smart and fun. It’s created early AM every weekday and delivered between 7-8 am CST. We love data, earnings reports, executive presentations and stories off the beaten path that get at what’s happening in the world of retail. Contact us @ info@shiftmarketinggroup.net.

 

 

Tuesday Tipsheet: Kroger CEO on CNBC | CVS FE Comp -4.5%| Publix Comp +5%

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“CVS Q3 Front-End Sales Down 4.5%” “Front store same store sales would have been approximately 480 basis points higher if tobacco and the estimated associated basket sales were excluded from the three months ended September 30, 2014 and 2013.” Read the release

 

“Target quietly testing mobile payment app to rival Apple Pay” by Kavita Kumar at Star-Tribune. “Eddie Baeb, a spokesman for the Minneapolis-based retailer, confirmed that a group of Target’s headquarters employees has been trying out the CurrentC app in a couple of dozen Target stores around the Twin Cities. “Right now, it’s in a very early test phase,” he added, noting that there has been no date set to roll it out to the public.” Read more

 

“Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen Appears on CNBC” “When asked about expansion plans, McMullen said Kroger is eyeing markets where the company already has a presence, but sees potential for growth. “There are still a lot of markets where our market share is 10 or 15 percent. We find that by getting market share higher than that, it really creates a good return,” he said.” See the video / Read more

 

“Kroger gives shoppers a peek at its high-tech store of the future” at Cincinnati Bus. Courier. “The Cincinnati-based grocery chain is using new digital shelf-edge technology in the cereal aisle at its Cold Spring store that replaces paper price tags with screens. The new shelving displays allow video and sound, and they could make it cheaper for Kroger to change its prices each week.” Read more

 

“Online sales growth to slow this holiday: Forrester” by Krystina Gustafson at CNBC. “But in what could be a sign that the category is edging closer toward saturation, the digital sales growth rate is only expected to increase by 13 percent this holiday, marking their first deceleration since the 2010 to 2011 period.” Read more

 

“Wal-Mart’s Price to Oversee Asia, This Time From Arkansas” at Bloomberg. “Price will be reappointed president and chief executive officer of Asia, five months after leaving the post he had held since 2009 for a transfer to the U.S., Wal-Mart China spokesman Ray Bracy said in a telephone interview.” Read more

 

“PwC’s Negative Holiday Sales Projections an Outlier” by Maria Halkias at Dallas News. “There’s one outlier among this year’s holiday forecasts: PwC forecasts that individual shoppers will spend an average of 7 percent less than last year. For two consecutive years, most people in the PwC survey said the economy is the same or worse than it was last year…This year it was 72 percent of respondents. And 84 percent said they plan to spend the same or less than last year.” Read more / See other projections

 

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DC Area: Deal to bring Wegmans to Tysons falls apart by Jonathan O’Connell at Washington Post. “Shafer declined to say why the deal didn’t work out but it entailed far more complexities than the Rochester, N.Y. chain usually encounters in building its stores.” Read more

 

JCP Ups Ante on Thanksgiving by Phil Wahba at Fortune. “J.C. Penney said on Monday it would open its stores for Black Friday shopping at 5 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day, an hour earlier than its closest competitors Macy’s, Kohl’s and Sears, and three hours earlier than it did last year, in the latest upping of the ante in the holiday sales wars.” Read more

 

“WinCo Foods Opens Two More – Nears 100” The Lewiston, Idaho store is located at 2001 17th Street, is 59,400 square feet in size and will initially employ about 100 individuals, 90 of whom have been hired locally. The North Richland Hills store is located at 5152 Rufe Snow Dr., is 82,600 square feet in size.” Read the release

 

“Publix Q3 Comp Sales +5%” Read the release

 

“Argentina suspends P&G operations” by Alexander Coolidge at Cincinnati.com. “Argentine authorities have suspended Procter & Gamble’s operations in the country after accusing the household products giant of tax fraud.” Read more

 

“Nordstrom to lay off 142 workers in Vancouver, Wash.” at Seattle Times. Read more

 

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Eye-on-Retail is a daily tipsheet read by thousands of Retail Merchants & Executives every weekday morning. Eye-on-Retail is unique because it’s timely, smart and fun. It’s created early AM every weekday and delivered between 7-8 am CST. We love data, earnings reports, executive presentations and stories off the beaten path that get at what’s happening in the world of retail. Contact us @ info@shiftmarketinggroup.net.

Monday Tipsheet: Wgreen’s ‘Bitter’ Executive | Who is Alex from Target? | Lowe’s Swarmed

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“How Alibaba Plans to Help U.S. Exporters” at WSJ. “MR. BERMAN: What U.S. small business products would make sense in the Chinese market? MR. MA: Last year we helped Washington state. We sold 150 tons of cherries. We sell Alaska seafood. We sold 80 tons of nuts to China. There are so many farm products here that can be sold to China; because of the pollution, people cannot have good quality products.” Read the full interview (Subscription)

 

Trending: Who is Alex from Target? by Emilee Speck at Orlando Sentinel. “The red-shirted Target employee can now add internet-famous to his resume. Twitter users began photoshopping memes, creating Tumblrs, Twitter handles and nonstop tweeting about “Alex from Target.” Thanks to the power of the internet “Official Alex from Target” now has more than 174,000 followers, according to @acl163’s bio.” Read more

 

“Walgreen aims to stop disclosures in lawsuit” by Ellen Jean Hirst at Chicago Tribune. “Make no mistake: This lawsuit is brought by a bitter former executive who, after he was told he would not become the CFO of the combined Walgreens-Alliance Boots company, and only after he was subsequently told that he would not be allowed to continue as the Chief Financial Officer (‘CFO’) of Walgreens, has lashed out with a series of threats, untruths and half-truths” Walgreen wrote.” Read more

 

“Amazon isn’t discontinuing its India operations; is likely to expand further” by Richa Sharma at Economic Times. “We, at Business Insider India, spoke to Amazon’s officials to find out the truth and were surprised when they rubbished the report and cited that this piece of news is nothing, but an egregious example of misreporting.” Read more

 

NY Times: “Stung Last Year, Retailers and Shippers Retool for the Holiday Season” by Rachel Abrams. “Given the expected spike in online sales, the big question will be whether retailers and carriers can plan well enough to avoid the same problems. “Is it a redux of last year, or did we learn any lessons to fix the problem?” said Sucharita Mulpuru, an analyst with Forrester, who wrote the report predicting this year’s holiday sales.” Read more

 

“Lowe’s Swarmed by Bee Activist Group on Halloween” by Mark Koba at CNBC. “”We’ve been reaching out to Lowe’s for the past year on this issue,” said Friends of the Earth’s Tiffany Finck-Haynes. “Finally in May of this year they did contact us but said they would follow the Environmental Protection Agency’s guidelines on pesticides.” In an email to CNBC, Karen Cobb, manager of corporate public relations at Lowe’s, reiterated what it told Friends of the Earth, adding “it is concerned about the loss of bees and other pollinators”. Read more

 

Amazon: 37% of Global Workplace is Female by Rachel Lerman at Puget Sounds Bus. Journal. “Amazon followed many of its fellow tech companies Friday and released its diversity statistics. The report didn’t bring many surprises — the workforce is mostly male, and mostly white. But it does have significantly more women in its ranks than Microsoft and Google.” Read more

 

Walmart: 65%+ of Customers Have Smart Phones by Kim Souza at The City Wire. “Stores will feature more “retailtainment” events like Frozen parties, or trade-in and up promotions for gamers like the early release of Call of Duty. Wal-Mart said retailtainment and store events are left up to store managers, although the corporate office does make broad recommendations which are followed about 80% of the time.” Read more

 

“Dollar General extends its tender offer for Family Dollar to Dec. 31” by Jennifer Thomas at Charlotte Bus. Journal. Read more

 

“Get ready for video ads in your Instagram feed” by Keith Wagstaff at CNBC. “Not seeing them? That’s not a mistake. As with Instagram’s photo ads, which launched last fall, each one is targeted at a specific audience. Ads from L’Oreal will launch in a week or two, a company spokesperson said, with more expected in the future.” Read more

 

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Eye-on-Retail is a daily tipsheet read by thousands of Retail Merchants & Executives every weekday morning. Eye-on-Retail is unique because it’s timely, smart and fun. It’s created early AM every weekday and delivered between 7-8 am CST. We love data, earnings reports, executive presentations and stories off the beaten path that get at what’s happening in the world of retail. Contact us @ info@shiftmarketinggroup.net.