“Target Canada to experiment with overstocking in turnaround effort” by Marina Strauss at Globe & Mail. “The chain is quietly experimenting with ordering more merchandise than its systems think it needs for five of its best performing stores while “over-investing” in strong selling inventory at its top 20 outlets, Mr. Schindele said during a tour of Target’s Toronto Stockyards mall location, one of its premier stores.” Read more

 

“Analyst: Target could sell Canadian assets to Wal-Mart” by Marina Strauss at Globe & Mail. “Will troubled discounter Target Canada stay in Canada or leave? That’s the burning question that retail analyst Perry Caicco at CIBC World Markets asks in a report on Wednesday. It may do either, but probably won’t make a decision until the end of 2015, he concludes. If it leaves, it may sell its assets to savvier rivals, he says. Discount giant Wal-Mart Canada Corp. would be the most likely buyer, Mr. Caicco suggests.” Read more

 

“Inside Costco: A look at the first store in Upstate New York” by WSYR-TV. “For Central New Yorkers, a passport is required to get to the nearest store, more than 150 miles away in Canada. That changes Friday when Camillus’s Costco opens to customers, what the store calls members. It will be the first store in Upstate New York, before cities like Rochester, Albany and Buffalo.” See the in-store video

 

Forbes: Interview with Lowe’s CMO Tom Lamb by Jennifer Rooney at Forbes. “Tom Lamb has been CMO at Lowe’s for 15 years, an unheard-of tenure for a chief marketer. But that longevity has provided him with a unique view on what works and what doesn’t in building the home-improvement brand. Core to all of his efforts these days, of course, is data, and he and his team are using it in myriad ways to ensure that customers experience a consistency across all Lowe’s touchpoints” Read more

 

“Video: Walmart CMO Quinn Upbeat on Holidays” by Jack Neff at Ad Age. “To keep up with the demand for thousands of pieces of content, largely video, the retailer has established a single “holiday hub” for producing all of its holiday work, led by Senior VP-Creative Andy Murray, Mr. Quinn said.” See the 2 minute video

 

“Online shopping yields different prices” by Callum Borchers at Boston Globe. “Conducted this spring, the Northeastern study examined the e-commerce websites of 16 well-known outlets and found nine, including Orbitz, Travelocity, and Home Depot, that sometimes delivered different results to different customers, even those who used the same search terms.” Read more

 

…Home Depot Responds by Elizabeth Dwoskin at WSJ. “Home Depot Inc. shows mobile-device users products that are roughly $100 more expensive than those offered to desktop-computer users…Home Depot didn’t dispute the accuracy of the findings, but the home-improvement retailer wasn’t “intentionally steering search results,” said company spokesman Stephen Holmes. Many factors could influence what a customer sees on the company’s sites, Mr. Holmes said, including prior browsing and purchase history, the location of the store, and whether the customer is on mobile or not.” Read more (Subscription)

 

“Who needs Black Friday? Retailers already cutting prices” by Krystina Gustafson at CNBC. “Janney Capital Markets analyst Adrienne Yih-Tennant said in a note to investors on Wednesday that last weekend was the most promotional to date in the third quarter, with many apparel retailers offering deeper discounts than one year ago.” Read more

 

“Tractor Supply Q3 Comp Sales +5.6%”  “Comparable store transaction count increased 3.3% and average ticket increased 2.2%.” Read the release

 

“Wal-Mart Becomes Agile But Finds Some Limits” by Rachel King at WSJ. “Over the past two years, parts of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. have begun to embrace a methodology known as Agile for rapid and flexible software development. Still, the methodology, now gaining ground beyond its core base of technology company practitioners, can’t be applied to everything, said a Wal-Mart employee at a conference in Silicon Valley.” Read more (Subscription)

 

“U.K. Retail Sales Fall More Than Forecast as Clothing Drops” at Bloomberg. “The volume of sales including auto fuel fell 0.3 percent from August, with clothing and footwear sales dropping 7.8 percent, the most since April 2012…Economists forecast a 0.1 percent decline.” Read more

 

“​Investor group wants Walgreens to postpone an acquisition following CFO lawsuit” at Chicago Bus. Journal. “​A union-backed investor group is urging Walgreen Co. to postpone its $15.3 billion buyout of Alliance Boots Holdings Ltd. pending the results of a defamation lawsuit filed by its former chief financial officer.” Read more

 

“Recap of Changes Coming to Walmart’s Neighborhood Markets” by Kim Souza at The City Wire. “I want to be able to walk in to the store and I want to be able to see what we want to sell to the customer. … If you’re going there at the moment, you expect to see apples because it’s the beginning of the apple season. I don’t want to have to stumble over two pallets of Coca-Cola and three point of sale signs directing me to buy Halloween candy when I want to walk in to produce,” Greg Foran said.” Read more

 

NY Times: “Tesco Chairman to Step Down as Overstatement of Profits Grows” by Jenny Anderson. Read more

 

“Orchard Supply opens mysterious vault in old San Jose store” by Joe Rodriguez at San Jose Mercury News. “For a very long time, nobody at Orchard Supply Hardware knew what was inside a tall, mysterious vault on the second floor of the old flagship store near downtown. On Wednesday afternoon, a locksmith surrounded by news reporters and fidgety company officials took a drill to the old safe and found….”We were hoping for $205 million in gold bars,” OSH President Richard Maltsbarger joked, referring to the price Lowe’s Home Improvement paid to acquire the company out of bankruptcy.” Read more

 

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