Tipsheet: B.Buy+1.6% | D.Tree/Burlington+0.5% | WeWork for Retail Space | Wmart Execs Present
Best Buy Q1 Comp Sales +1.6% “Joly: “Compared to our expectations going into the quarter, our revenue was higher due to strong performance in gaming, a better-than-expected result in mobile, and the improvement of overall sales trends due to the arrival of delayed federal tax refund checks.” Press release
…This is how Best Buy gets so many of its customers to come into its stores by Tonya Garcia at MarketWatch. “About one-third of the consumer electronics retailer’s online sales are picked up in stores…Many customers don’t trust an expensive item to be shipped through home-delivery channels and left on the front porch or outside an apartment door.” Read more
Dollar Tree Q1 Comp Sales +0.5%: By Segment – Dollar Tree +2.5%, Family Dollar -1.2% Press release
Burlington Q1 Comp Sales +0.5% Press release
Wal-Mart regaining grocery share from competitors at ‘accelerating rate’ by Jeff Daniels at CNBC. “Loop Capital analyst Andrew Wolf…estimates (Wal-Mart) now has a 21.5 percent market share in the U.S. traditional grocery industry.” Read more
J.Crew’s Mickey Drexler Confesses: I Underestimated How Tech Would Upend Retail by Khadeeja Safdar at Wall Street Journal. “If I could go back 10 years, I might have done some things earlier.”…The New York City native, who doesn’t have his own Instagram, Facebook or Twitter account, was sharing thoughts with employees on a loudspeaker—hooked up through his phone—before Twitter was launched.” Read more (subscription)
Coach Thinks Outside the Bag by Phil Wahba at Fortune. “It’s not every day that you hear a $3,500 leather jacket described as a bargain. But that’s the argument Coach CEO Victor Luis is making as he shows off a piece from Coach’s new collaboration with hip luxury brand Rodarte…“In Europe they’d call this haute couture. The reality is that at $3,500, it’s a steal.” Read more
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Wal-Mart import exec discusses trade challenges by Kim Souza at The City Wire. “(Lisa) Schimmelpfenning…said the unraveling of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was a blow for Wal-Mart given that the retailer had spent an entire year in Vietnam working to create public/private partnerships to facilitate trade and educate suppliers who could help the retailers do business with Vietnam. “He [Trump] shut that down,” she said.” Read more
Aldi named the best place in the UK to buy beer, wine and spirits by Imogen Blake at Daily Mail. Read more
WaWa, Walgreens and Others Try to Clean Bad Map Data by Kate Kaye at Ad Age. “This is a problem for every single one of these organizations,” said Greg Sterling, VP-strategy and insights at the Local Search Association. Companies including Ignite Technologies, Brandify, Yext and MomentFeed are stepping in to provide services for cleaning and distributing data updates across search engines and mapping and traffic navigation tools.” Read more
Shoe Carnival Q1 Comp Sales -3.9% Press release
Sears just surprised Wall Street with a narrower-than-expected Q1 loss by Lauren Thomas at CNBC. “Sears’ U.S. stores saw their (Q1) same-store sales drop 12.4 percent, while at Kmart stores they fell 11.2 percent during the first quarter.” Read more
BrandSpark Most Trusted CPG Brands “…more than 10,000 American shoppers determined the winners by naming their most trusted Food & Beverage, Health & Beauty, Household & Pets and Kids & Babies brands.” Brands by category
BJ’s launches B2B Sales division – minimum order $5,000 Press release | Details
Think grocery shopping is expensive in the Bay Area? New study says maybe not by Annie Sciacca at Mercury News. “…it costs 396 percent more to buy healthy groceries in New Orleans than Palo Alto…for parents shopping for newborns, products cost 215 percent more in Tucson, Arizona, than in San Francisco.” Read more
Boston/Northeast/St.Louis hurt Lowe’s Q1 comps…Q1 Earnings Call Transcript via Seeking Alpha
Williams-Sonoma Q1 Comp Brand Revenue +0.1% “Pottery Barn (1.4 %), Williams Sonoma +3.2 %, West Elm +6.0 %, Pottery Barn Kids (5.7 %), PBteen (14.3 %).” Press release
The robots are coming for recruiters by Lionel Laurent at Bloomberg. “Two-thirds of temporary jobs are seen at high risk of automation versus about half elsewhere…” Read more
“WEWORK FOR RETAIL SPACE” – Flexible retail startup Bulletin raises $2.2M by Anthony Ha at TechCrunch. “The idea is to give businesses — particularly online brands — access to brick-and-mortar retail space without the cost or commitment of a traditional lease. Those businesses can rent sections of a Bulletin store on a month-to-month basis. Within that space, they get to decide which products get sold, the pricing and how they’re displayed.” Read more
SpartanNash Names Kathy Mahoney President, MDV military division Press release
Tipsheet Extra Stories
Starbucks CEO’s first major initiative reportedly left employees steamed
Wal-Mart executive says free trade ties important to Arkansas
Etsy, under pressure from investors, cuts its intern program
Campbell Soup invests $10M in online meal-kit firm
Why a Giant New Eataly Won’t Sell Parmesan Cheese or Parma Ham
Lululemon’s site goes offline for about a day after a power failure
Women Hold Nearly 65% of the Country’s $1.3-Trillion in Student Debt
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