Tipsheet: Should Target Outsource Grocery? | H.Depot 4×4 Lawsuit | Kroger Glad Lidl Store Open | Etsy Cuts 22%
BRAVE FACE – Kroger Is Oddly ‘Excited’ About Being Invaded By Lidl by Lindsay Rittenhouse at The Street. “I’m glad their stores are finally open,” Kroger CFO Michael Schlotman said at Oppenheimer’s Consumer Conference on Wednesday, June 21…One of the biggest markdowns Schlotman highlighted at Wednesday’s conferences was on the price of a half-gallon carton of milk. He said at some of those southern stores, milk is sold for 99 cents.” Read more
Menards, Home Depot face lawsuits over descriptions of 4x4s by Rick Romell at Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “They haven’t measured 4 inches by 4 inches since the ‘50s,” Scott Sunila said after loading purchases from the Germantown store into the bed of his pickup. “My God, that’s crazy,” the 60-year-old bulldozer operator said of the lawsuits. “Let me on the jury. They ain’t winning. And they’re gonna pay me extra for my time.” Read more
Etsy will cut 15 percent of its workforce in a new round of layoffs by Catherine Shu at TechCrunch. “When combined with an earlier downsizing announced in early May, this round brings total eliminated positions to about 230, or about 22 percent of what Etsy’s total workforce was at the end of 2016.” Read more
Sycamore Partners in advanced talks to buy Staples, with deal potentially topping $6 billion via CNBC. “An agreement could be announced as early as next week, though negotiations between Sycamore and Staples are continuing and there is still a possibility that deal discussions could fall apart, the sources added.” Read more
…Lady Gaga Teams Up with Staples for Education Press release
Wayfair’s co-founders are now worth a combined $2.74 billion by Tom Metcalf at Bloomberg. “I probably spent three years bugging Niraj to take my money,” said Alex Finkelstein, a venture capitalist at Spark Capital who led a $165 million investment round in 2011 and served on Wayfair’s board until 2015. “They built the company to an incredible scale without raising money. They didn’t need to as they always ran it profitably.” Read more
Hollywood Reporter’s 100 Most Powerful People in Entertainment Top 100 list
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New Products Are Coming At a Staggering Pace, Home Depot Says by Lindsay Rittenhouse at The Street. “Home Depot’s Ted Decker, EVP of merchandising, said at Wednesday’s conference that new products like battery-powered outdoor tools including lawnmowers and hedge trimmers, compared to gas-powered, are “transforming the industry.” “The pace of innovation in new product introduction is staggering,” Decker said. “We have a quarterly new product book. It’s hundreds of pages.” Read more | Conference transcript
MATCH – Ebay will now match Amazon’s, Walmart’s and others’ prices on over 50,000 items by Sarah Perez at TechCrunch. “In order to qualify, the item must be one of the new, unopened items sold daily through eBay Deals, for starters.” Read more
NO MATCH – Walmart adds Minnesota stores to locations that will no longer match rivals’ prices by John Ewoldt at Star Tribune. “The move is an extension of a test that began last year as the country’s largest retailer quit price-matching in about 800 of its 5,000 U.S. stores.” Read more
Jet.com Agency Wins Grand Prix in Media by Katie Richards at Adweek. “Back in February, R/GA released a Super Bowl campaign for Jet.com, but it didn’t run during the Super Bowl and it wasn’t exactly a Super Bowl ad. The ads featured a bunch of “Super Bowls,” from ice cream bowls to decorative bowls, that could all be purchased on Jet.com.” Read more
Hacked: How Business Is Fighting Back Against the Explosion in Cybercrime by Jeff John Roberts & Adam Lashinsky at Fortune. Read more
…Here Are 10 of the Biggest Corporate Hacks in History (Target, Home Depot, Tesco) by Jeff John Roberts at Fortune. Read more
JD.com invests $397M into luxury marketplace Farfetch by Catherine Shu at TechCrunch. Read more
J.Crew’s lenders consent to amend loan terms, buying the apparel retailer more time by Lauren Thomas at CNBC. “If J.Crew’s lenders hadn’t consented, this could have sped up the retailer’s path to a potential bankruptcy — something many people who follow the company have been watching.” Read more
The 2017 Civic 50 Honorees (CVS, Food Lion, General Mills) Full list
Target’s Been Talking Food for a Decade. Now Amazon Could Eat Bullseye’s Lunch by Matthew Boyle at Bloomberg. “Some analysts think Target should just outsource its grocery aisles to a supermarket specialist as it’s done with its pharmacy business, which since December 2015 has been operated by CVS Health Corp.” Read more
Speculation for Uber’s Next CEO Includes Walmart’s Karenann Terrell & CVS’s Helena Foulkes at Fortune. Read more
Tipsheet Extra Stories
Wisconsin is now the third state to allow delivery robots
‘Downton Abbey’ Movie Aims for Production in 2018
A Chinese bike-sharing startup has closed because riders stole almost all their bikes
Jeff Bezos has advice for the news business: ‘Ask people to pay. They will pay’
Harley-Davidson could be looking to buy Ducati
Walmart responds to social media rumors about system hack
Grocery store odor was like “shopping in a toilet that hasn’t been flushed for months”
Aggressive bees attack in California, killing dog and stinging several people
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