South Florida stores order drinking water, hurricane supplies as jittery locals empty shelves at Miami Herald. “Monday, shoppers said they were hitting stores early to beat last-minute crowds that generally flood stores just before a storm is expected. Some stores were able to keep pace with the surge of early birds. At a Publix in Miami’s Morningside neighborhood, shelves still held ample supplies of bottled water at midafternoon, and workers were refilling them through the day.” Read more

 

Fear of Amazon Pushes Blackstone to Call Off Major Shopping Mall Sale via Fortune. “Blackstone Group has called off the sale of its A$3.5 billion ($2.8 billion) Australian shopping mall portfolio, a source said, as the looming arrival of Amazon spooks buyers of bricks-and-mortar stores.” Read more

 

Target’s chief risk and compliance officer is leaving by Kavita Kumar at Star Tribune. “Target Corp.’s chief risk and compliance officer, Jackie Rice, one of a number of leaders hired in the wake of the retailer’s 2013 data breach, is leaving the company. Target said Rice made a “personal decision to leave Target to be closer to her family who live outside Minnesota.” Rice’s team of about 60 people will report directly to chief legal officer Don Liu, who has a background in risk compliance. The company does not plan to replace her.” Read more (tiered subs.)

 

HBC pushes further into Europe, despite industry and investor pressure by Hollie Shaw at Financial Post. “On Tuesday, Canada’s oldest retailer will open the first of 10 Hudson’s Bay stores starting up in 2017 in the Netherlands, “where the exodus of other players left a major vacuum between the highest-end players and the discount chains,” according to HBC chief executive Jerry Storch.” Read more

 

Lego Cuts 1,400 Jobs as Sales Slump on Weak ‘Batman’ Demand by Christian Wienberg at Bloomberg. “The company said it would reduce its workforce by 8 percent after a decade of rapid expansion more than doubled it to the current level of about 18,200.” Read more

 

Amazon’s AbeBooks rare books and collectibles site back online after 2-day outage by Todd Bishop at GeekWire. “An AbeBooks spokesman confirmed Sunday morning that it was “a full outage caused by a hardware issue.” Read more

 

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Lululemon CEO: Talk of athleisure slowdown is a ‘misinterpretation’ by Angelica LaVito at CNBC. “I mean, I was in Europe a couple weeks ago, I’m going to Asia in three weeks, and we see more and more people wanting to live an athletic lifestyle.” Read more/Video

 

Bricks-and-mortar stores are still a sweet spot for See’s Candies at LA Times via Omaha Herald. “Q: When are your peak seasons? A: Eighty percent of our sales occur in the six-week period before Christmas, the two-week period before Valentine’s Day and the three- or four-week period before Easter.” Interview w/CEO

 

Target Apologizes for Cancelling Orders to Israel at The Jerusalem Post. “Target said it was overwhelmed by the high demand of Israeli consumers after the Borderfree shipping company offered free shipping to Israel on orders made Aug. 18-20. The orders were to be delivered by DHL.” Read more

 

This Gadget Tells You If Your Handbag Is a Fake by Pavel Alpeyev at Bloomberg. “Entrupy’s solution is a handheld microscope camera that lets anyone with a smartphone check a luxury accessory within minutes. Since launching the service a year ago, the company says its accuracy has improved to better than 98 percent for 11 brands including Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Gucci.” Read more

 

European Mall Landlords Coping With Online Competition Better Than U.S. Owners by Esther Fung at Wall Street Journal. “The main reason that analysts cite is Europe, with its more densely-occupied markets, didn’t experience the retail development boomthat the U.S. did in the 30 years leading up to the 2008 crash. In the U.S., there’s 24 square feet of retail space for every man, woman and child compared with five square feet in the U.K., four in France, and three in Spain and Italy, according to data from the International Council of Shopping Centers.” Read more (subs.)

 

Chocolate Gets First Addition to Color Palette in 80 Years: Ruby at Bloomberg. “As Hershey cuts 15 percent of its staff and Nestle tries to sell its U.S. chocolate business, ruby chocolate raises the possibility that next Valentine’s Day may arrive with store shelves full of natural pink chocolate hearts.” Read more

 

More than half in UK are non-religious, suggests survey at BBC. “Among those aged between 18 and 25, the proportion was higher at 71%…When the national centre’s British Social Attitudes survey began in 1983, 31% of respondents said they had no religion.” Read more

 

Canada emerges as a tough negotiator in Nafta talks at Fox Business. Read more

 

Wary of robots taking jobs, Hawaii toys with guaranteed pay at CBS News. “Hawaii state lawmakers have voted to explore the idea of a universal basic income in light of research suggesting that a majority of waiter, cook and building cleaning jobs…will eventually be replaced by machines.” Read more

 

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Read Tipsheet Extra Stories

 

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