Archive for category: Eye-on-Retail

“Kroger CEO to retire at start of 2014, COO to replace him” at Reuters.  “Kroger said on Friday that David Dillon, the grocery store’s chief executive officer for a decade, plans to step down from that job in January and that President and Chief Operating Officer Rodney McMullen will replace him as CEO.”  Read more

“Q&A: W. Rodney McMullen, next Kroger CEO” by Alexander Coolidge at Cincinnati Enquirer.  “On Kroger’s strategy: McMullen said he’s not planning any major changes in strategy. He noted the company has prospered in the past decade with its Customer 1st strategy that emphasizes competitive pricing, a broad variety of products, customer service and improving the shopping experience.”  Read more

“Does Dollar General have Family Dollar takeover in mind?” by G. Chambers Williams III at The Tennessean.  “On Oct. 5, Dollar General Corp. will celebrate the opening of its 11,000th store, in Murfreesboro, as the small-box retailer continues to deliver on a promise to add 650 new stores this year.  But analysts are buzzing over the possibility that Goodlettsville-based Dollar General, founded in Scottsville, Ky., in 1939, could instantly bring an additional 7,600 stores into its fold by acquiring its biggest direct competitor, Family Dollar Stores Inc.”  Read more

“The First Day of Home Depot’s Conquest of the Stock Market”  by Alex Planes at Motley Fool.  “Home Depot went public on Sept. 22, 1981, two years after its first stores opened in Atlanta. The home-improvement retailer listed 600,000 shares at $12 per share to raise $7.2 million — enough to build a handful of megastores in 1981.  In its first year of trading, this tiny over-the-counter stock soared more than 300% in value, but it remained off Wall Street’s radar despite recording a 220% year-over-year increase in revenue.”  Read more

“America’s fastest-growing retailers” at MarketWatch.  “From 24/7 Wall St., these are America’s fastest-growing retailers…”  Read more

“Costco grand opening: 200 jobs and ‘a huge win’ for New Orleans” by Robert Morris at Up Town Messenger.  “For their 650 other stores around the country, they mostly just opened the doors and people started shopping, the executives said.  “We’ve never been treated like this before,” Costco cofounder Jeff Brotman said. “You guys know how to throw a party.”  Read more

“Home Depot Can’t Escape Rivals’ Power Tool Antitrust Suit” by Jonathan Randles at Law 360 (Free Subscription Required).  “A California federal judge on Thursday refused to excuse Home Depot USA Inc. from a rival retailer’s antitrust suit alleging the world’s largest home improvement store conspired to prevent its competitors from stocking popular power tool brands.  U.S. District Judge Jon S. Tigar mostly denied Home Depot’s bid to dismiss competitor Orchard Supply Hardware LLC’s complaint. Orchard Supply claims Home Depot pressured power tool makers Milwaukee Electric Tool Corp. and Makita USA Inc. to boycott rival retail chains, including Amazon.com Inc.”  Read more

“US holiday sales may rise 4.5%, Deloitte says” by Katie Little at CNBC.  “As the economy continues to improve at a steady gradual pace, one research firm expects sales during the crucial holiday season to improve moderately.  Sales are expected to rise between 4 percent and 4.5 percent in the November to January period to a range of $963 billion to $967 billion, according to a forecast from Deloitte released on Monday.”  Read more

“Costco Loses $9.9 Million in Runaway Cart Verdict” by Selim Algar at NY Post.  “A pain-wracked mom scored a stunning $9.9 million verdict last week after she was smacked with an out-of-control shopping cart at a Costco outlet in Brooklyn that left her forced to hobble on a cane, The Post has learned.”  Read more

“Real men don’t shop? Think again: Retail’s new frontier” by Katie Little at CNBC.  “”I think we’ve reached a point in society where millennial and Gen X men grew up a little differently,” said Candace Corlett, WSL’s president. “They grew up hanging out in a mall in a world where there were so many stores. They didn’t marry as young, and now they’re married to working women. Now all of these forces are coming together to create a new world of male shoppers.”  Read more

“For Migrants, New Land of Opportunity Is Mexico” by Damien Cave at NY Times.  “While Mexico’s economy is far from trouble free, its growth easily outpaced the giants of the hemisphere — the United States, Canada and Brazil — in 2011 and 2012, according to International Monetary Fund data, making the country more attractive to fortune seekers worldwide.”  Read more

“Macy’s blurs lines between stores, online” by Alexander Coolidge at Cincy Enquirer.  “The nation’s second-largest department store has expanded its network of fulfillment departments to 500 stores – including all six in Greater Cincinnati. The backroom operations add shipping capabilities at two-thirds of Macy’s stores, allowing them to fill both online orders and from locations where an item is out of stock.” Read more

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“Walmart Loses Share to Dollar General” by Kim Souza at The City Wire.  “Kantar found Dollar General had the least expensive total basket by far; driven by lower opening price points in its edible and non-edible baskets…Long said Dollar General is blanketing the country with rural stores, while Wal-Mart is still in the first inning of its Walmart Express format, which began in rural areas but more recently has been gravitating toward denser populated regions…“A trip to a Walmart Supercenter is a commitment, but a Dollar Store trip is quick and easy with a little bit of a treasure hunt mixed in,” Long said.”  Read more

“Walmart to Expand Campus Locations Throughout the US” by Zachary Stanton at Arkansas Traveler.  “There are three operational campus Walmarts in the U.S. Besides the store at the Univ of Ark., which opened in 2011, Arizona State University and Georgia Tech both have campus Walmarts that opened in 2013.  Walmart plans to open another location across the street from the University of Missouri.  The new locations will range between 2,500 and 5,000 square feet and offer pharmacy services, as well as financial services, including in-store check cashing and bill pay, Jones said.”  Read more

“Ace says Afghanistan is the place” by Steve Geary at DC Velocity.  “Press reports suggest that the Safis expect to invest $40 million to $50 million in the Ace Hardware expansion. A significant portion of that will go toward logistics…But getting it to the shelf won’t be easy. Ace’s closest distribution center is in Dubai, more than 1,000 miles from Mazar-e Sharif as the crow flies. And there’s no easy way to move freight between the two locations. In theory, you could ship from Dubai via Iran, but for a variety of obvious reasons, that option is not available.”  Read more 

“Publix Pharmacy Ranks No. 1 in Consumer Satisfaction with Target a Close 2nd” at Digital Journal.  “The top performers on the delight index – Publix and Target – rated head and shoulders above the other leading chains in the operational excellence attributes. Publix ranked first for friendly staff, atmosphere and cleanliness. Target led in checkout times, followed by Walgreens and Rite Aid, both of which performed consistently well across most of the categories. See Graph 3.”  Read more

“Dick’s Sporting Goods Shoots for 800 Stores by 2017”  “The Company anticipates growing its store base to over 800 DICK’S Sporting Goods stores by the end of fiscal 2017, an increase of approximately 300 stores from the 518 stores at the end of fiscal 2012. DICK’S Sporting Goods has developed a range of prototypes depending on market characteristics, including its traditional 50,000 sq. ft. single-level stores, 35,000 sq. ft. smaller market stores and 80,000 sq. ft. two-level stores.”  Read more

“Walmart’s Platform For Female-Owned Businesses Is Surprisingly Exciting” by Ariel Schwartz at Fast Company.  “For now, most products from the Empowering Women Together suppliers are only available online. That may change. ComfortCake, a company started by Chicago entrepreneur Amy Hilliard, has already made the transition to selling its Luscious Lemon Gourmet Pound Cake Mix in physical Walmart stores.  “We have the ability to understand current capacity and future capacity. Some [entrepreneurs] like Amy might start selling on Walmart.com–let’s say 500 to 1,000 pieces–and if she’s able to increase orders, we can figure out the right timing to get into stores,” explains Lemmon.”  Read more

“No more business cards for you! Inside the new Heinz” by Jennifer Reingold at Fortune.  “Later that day, about half of the executives were summoned, in 15-minute increments, to a conference room where the new CEO calmly informed them whether they had a place at the new company or whether their Heinz career was over. “You couldn’t dream it up, it was that weird,” says one attendee.  When the purge was over, 11 of the top 12 executives were gone, replaced, in many cases, by people they had managed.”  Read more

“Companies including Kroger and Walmart Unplug From the Electric Grid, Delivering a Jolt to Utilities” by Rebecca Smith & Cassandra Sweet at WSJ.  “At a big food-distribution center Kroger also owns in Compton, Calif., a tank system installed this year uses bacteria to convert 150 tons a day of damaged produce, bread and other organic waste into a biogas that is burned on site to produce 20% of the electricity the facility uses…Wal-Mart produces about 4% of the electricity it uses but intends to make 20% by 2020, taking advantage of idle acreage on thousands of store rooftops.”  Read more

“Whole Foods Teaches the Art of Butchery”  “To teach the art of butchery and continue to honor an age-old profession, Whole Foods is launching an in-store Meat Apprenticeship Program for its team members. The intensive 18-month training program is designed to transform aspiring butchers into skilled meat cutters.”  Read more

“Twitter posts inaccurately high metrics about its ads, changes them after questions” at San Fran Chronicle.  “Today the Twitter Ads blog posted numbers about how well Twitter ads performed at this week’s London Fashion Week, based on how many times people tweeted about an advertiser and how many times the event’s hashtag appeared in user timelines. SFGate looked into the numbers, which appeared to be inaccurately high. Twitter has since changed one to 1/25th of what it first reported. Another number, which was found to be wrong by 680 million impressions, has since disappeared from the blog.”  Read more

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“Walmart’s Cheap Beer Barely Covers Cost” by Minsi Chung and Renee Dudley at Businessweek.  “The markup on a 36-pack of Coors Light cans at a Los-Angeles-area store was 0.6 percent, compared with 16.2 percent for a package of Flaming Hot Cheetos, according to internal documents reviewed by Bloomberg. Companies typically don’t release information about markups so the March data provide a rare glimpse of Wal-Mart’s alcohol pricing strategy.  Wal-Mart’s push into beer is part of a plan to double alcohol sales by 2016 and seize a larger slice of a U.S. beer market worth about $45 billion.”  Read more

“Kroger execs in Phoenix after Unexpected Death of Fry’s President Jon Flora” by Tim Gallen at Phoenix Business Journal.  “Initially it was reported that Flora, 58, died from a sudden heart attack last Friday, but Lynn said that an autopsy revealed Flora passed away from a pulmonary thromboembolism.”  Read more

“Target embraces its French lessons” by Jeff Heinrich at Montreal Gazette.  “Quebec stores will be first time a ‘foreign’ language is used as the primary tongue in stores…Target is opening 25 stores across Quebec this fall: seven on Tuesday, nine on Oct. 18 and nine in November. Fisher wouldn’t confirm a rumoured 26th, on vacant land in Candiac.”  Read more

“Controversial Walmart Neighborhood Market Opens in LA Chinatown”  by Brigham Yen at DTLA Rising.  “This past Friday, Walmart Neighborbood Market opened its doors for business on the fringe of Chinatown. The dust is far from completely settled, but when all is said and done, Chinatown now has a bona fide grocery store — whether you like Walmart or not.”  Read more/See the in-store pictures

“Retailer REI Ends Era of Many Happy Returns” by Kirsten Grind at WSJ.  “For as long as anybody can remember, REI, which was founded in 1938 and has 130 stores in 32 states, has offered a no-questions-asked return policy, even giving customers cash in exchange for heavily used merchandise. Several years ago, a customer in Washington state successfully returned an REI snow suit he bought to climb Mount Rainier in 1970.  In June, though, the chain announced it would henceforth take back items only within a year of purchase.”  Read more

” ‘Target Ticket’ Targets October 1 Launch” by Jeff Baumgartner at Multichannel News.  “Target Ticket, a broadband-distributed movie and TV sales and rental service that will compete against Walmart’s Vudu, Apple iTunes and pay-TV video-on-demand offerings, will exit the beta phase and launch commercially in two weeks or less, the company confirmed.  “We expect to be ready to offer the service to guests by October 1. However, if we are able to go live a little early we will do so” a Target spokeswoman said via email late last week.”  Read more

“Inside The World Of Walmart Billionaire Alice Walton” by Clare O’Connor at Forbes.  “Sam Walton said it best when he described his youngest child and only daughter as “the most like me–a maverick–but even more volatile.” Of Sam’s three surviving children Alice has been the least involved in Walmart’s affairs and, though she attends the company’s annual meeting, she’s the only one not on the board.  She spends the majority of her time at her Rocking W Ranch an hour west of Fort Worth, Tex., in tiny Millsap (pop. 409).”  Read more

“U.S. holiday sales expected to rise less than last year” by Jessica Wohl at Reuters.  “Sales are forecast to rise only 2.4 percent in November and December compared with increases of 3 percent in 2012, 4 percent in 2011 and 3.8 percent in 2010.  Store visits are expected to fall 1.4 percent during those months, according to ShopperTrak, which provides some of the earliest predictions about the U.S. holiday shopping season. Traffic rose by 2.5 percent in 2012 after falling 3.1 percent in 2011.”  Read more

“Target collaborates with London designer” by Janet Moore at Star Tribune.  “Target said Monday it has a new design partner for a women’s spring fashion line — the hot London duo known as Peter Pilotto.  The news comes just days after a few pieces from the retailer’s 3.1 Phillip Lim fall line were inadvertently displayed in a handful of stores nationwide, causing a furor among fashion frugalistas.”  Read more

“Jimmy Kimmel Bought His Wife’s Wedding Ring At Costco” by Ned Hepburn at Uproxx.  “Jimmy Kimmel let it slip in an interview with Brooklyn Nine-Nine star Andy Samberg that he’d bought his wife’s wedding ring from a surprising source: Costco.com. Not that there’s anything wrong with that… it’s a perfectly practical place to buy all sorts of great deals, we’re told.”  See the Video

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“Breaking:  Retail sales fall short, up 0.2 percent in August” at CNBC.”  “U.S. retail sales rose less than expected in August even as demand increased for automobiles and other big-ticket items, the latest sign that economic growth slowed in the third quarter.  The Commerce Department said on Friday retail sales increased 0.2 percent last month as Americans bought automobiles, furniture and electronics and appliances.  However, they cut back on clothing, building materials and sporting goods.”  Read more

“Kroger Q2 Comps Up 3.3%” at Supermarket News.  “Net income for the quarter was up 13.6%, to $317 million, and sales rose 4.6%, to $22.7 billion.  The quarter marked Kroger’s 39th consecutive increase in same-store sales.”  Read more

“Wal-Mart highlights sustainable efforts” by Kim Souza at City Wire.  “Wal-Mart on Thursday (Sept. 12) held its annual Global Sustainability Milestone meeting in Bentonville and presented nine initiatives that have raised the company’s overall sustainability index reading by 12% in the past year…Jason Long, a supplier consultant in St.Louis with Shift Marketing Group, said Wal-Mart has put some teeth into their sustainability efforts…”I’m hearing more and more from suppliers who are trying to understand and demystify the sustainability scorecard requirements”  Read more

“Wal-Mart announces phase-out of hazardous chemicals” by Wendy Koch at USA Today.  “Prodded by health and environmental advocates, Wal-Mart announced Thursday that it will require suppliers to disclose and eventually phase out 10 hazardous chemicals from the fragrances, cosmetics, household cleaners and personal care products at its stores.”  Read more

“DC Mayor Kills Wage Bill Affecting Walmart” by Ben Nuckols at AP via Breitbart.  “Washington’s mayor has vetoed a bill that would force Wal-Mart and other large retailers to pay their employees a “living wage” of at least $12.50 an hour.  Mayor Vincent Gray says in a statement that the legislation is “not a true living-wage bill.” The Democratic mayor also calls it a “job killer,” saying large retailers would avoid opening stores in the District of Columbia if it became law.”  Read more

“Harris Teeter & Bi-Lo Purchase 29 Piggly Wiggly Locations”  “The acquisitions will give Harris Teeter more Charleston-area stores than its Florida-based rival Publix Super Markets, which operates 12 grocery stores in the area. Publix has been moving into Harris Teeter’s home turf in North Carolina with the opening of a Charlotte-based division.  Harris Teeter is itself being acquired for more than $2.4 billion by The Kroger Co., a deal expected to close later this year.”  Read more

“Staples Announces New Development Center in Seattle to Expand e-Commerce Capabilities”  “Staples is changing the way customers shop online,” said Faisal Masud, executive vice president, global e-commerce, Staples. “Seattle is an innovation hub rivaling Silicon Valley and features some of the world’s biggest technology companies. Staples new Development Center will allow us to tap into the wide range of talented engineering and e-commerce professionals on the West Coast.”.  Read more

“How Walmart’s Walton family holds onto their billions” by Zachary Mider at Bloomberg News via Financial Post.  “Wal-Mart Stores Inc. heiress Alice Walton founded Crystal Bridges in 2011 in a wooded ravine next to her childhood home, supplying dozens of paintings from her personal collection. Bankrolled by more than US$1-billion in donations from her family, the museum attests to the Waltons’ generosity and vast wealth. It’s also a monument to their skill at preserving that fortune across generations.”  Read more

“New Research Debunks ‘Showrooming’ Myths”  “Some of the key takeaways of the report include:  Showrooming isn’t just for the Millennial Generation: Contrary to popular belief, 74% of M-(Mobile) shoppers are older than 29 years old.  Mobile devices can actually improve the chances of an in-store purchase: More than 50% of M-Shoppers are more likely to purchase a product in-store when their mobile device helps them find online reviews, information, or trusted advice.”  Read more

“Target Announces LEED Certification for Additional 44 Stores” at Digital Journal.  “This announcement means that all 68 newly launched Target locations have been awarded LEED certification – a first for a major retailer in Canada.  Target is pursuing LEED certification for all 124 stores scheduled to open in Canada this year.”  Read more

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Have a great weekend!