“Happening Today:  Walmart Opens Two New Supercenters in DC (Finally!)”

See the in-store video via WUSA 9 News

See the in-store pics via WTOP

 

“Walmart Spends $57 Million on TV in November (Double Target’s Spend)” at Placed via Seeking Alpha.  “Walmart invested more than twice as much in TV advertising as any of its rivals – but earned an enormous share of retail visitor traffic in return.  Target had the second best ratio of the retailers analyzed at $2.4 million per share point.  Sears spent $13.7 million per visitor share point, more than 8X the rate that Walmart achieved.”  See the chart

 

“BJ’s Wants 1,300 Hess Gas Stations” by Ryan Dezember at WSJ.  “The private-equity owners of BJ’s have enlisted bankers and inquired about the gas-station chain, which they envision pairing with its wholesale clubs, according to people familiar with the matter. CVC Capital Partners Ltd. and Leonard Green & Partners LP paid about $2.8 billion in 2011 for BJ’s, which operates about 200 wholesale clubs in 15 eastern states. More than half of the stores feature gas stations.”  Read more

 

“Walmart: 1 billion page views Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday”  “Cyber Week continues as Walmart.com will offer 200 online specials every day through Friday, Dec. 6. Throughout this holiday season, Walmart.com is also offering free shipping on all orders of $35 or more – nearly 99 percent of Walmart.com items are eligible.”  Read more

 

“UPS:  We Can Launch Delivery Drones Too!” by Ben Popper at The Verge.  “Sources familiar with the company’s plans say it has been testing and evaluating different approaches to drone delivery. Asked for a comment, a company spokesman said that, “The commercial use of drones is an interesting technology and we’ll continue to evaluate it.”  Read more

 

“Want to serve on Walmart’s Board of Directors?  Reconsider” by Kim Souza at The City Wire.  “High profile exec Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, has been a board member for Wal-Mart Stores since 2012, and during that time she has been dogged by protestors at numerous events when she was scheduled to speak about Yahoo.  A noisy protest on Nov. 19 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, was the most brazen interruption Mayer has faced during her board tenure at Wal-Mart.”  Read more

 

“How Mariano’s plans to conquer the Chicago grocery business” by Brigid Sweeney at Chicago Crain’s.  “All told, Mariano’s will boast 29 locations in the Chicago market by the end of 2014 and employ roughly 10,000 people. But that’s only the half of it. Robert Mariano, chairman, president and CEO of Roundy’s, told investors yesterday that metro Chicago can sustain as many as 50 Mariano’s markets.”  Read more

 

“Top 10 Cities for Online Holiday Sales” by Maria Halkias at Dallas News.  “IBM reports that Cyber Monday was the biggest online shopping day in history with a 20.6 percent increase in online sales.  Mobile sales increased 55.4 percent from a year ago as retailers improved access to their online stores and shoppers became more nimble with their smartphones and tablets.”  See the Top 10 Cities

 

Thursday Earnings Preview:

“Earnings for Dollar General Projected to Rise” at Forbes.  Read more

“Kroger’s Earnings Expected to Increase” at Forbes.  Read more

 

“Home Depot CFO Carol Tome named to ‘2014 All-America Executive Team’ “  Read the article / See the Illustrated pic 

 

“Walmart has the Back of 30 Execs in Bribery Probe” by Aruna Viswanatha at Reuters via Chicago Tribune.  “Wal-Mart Stores Inc is paying for lawyers to represent more than 30 of its executives involved in a foreign corruption investigation, according to people familiar with the matter, an unusually high number that shows the depth of the federal probe.”  Read more

 

“Quebec Gov’t to Costco & Walmart:  No Book Discounts for You” by Les Perreaux at Globe & Mail.  “Mr. Kotto admitted what the law can do is limited. He could not say how it might stop online retailer Amazon from selling cheap books in Quebec. “There’s not much we can do about the giants,” he said.”  Read more

 

“The Insanity Of Bitcoin, Explained in 3 minutes 23 seconds” by John Brownlee at Fast Company.  “There are some incredibly thorough write-ups about Bitcoin on the web, but if you want to learn about the world’s first all-digital currency, there are few ways more enjoyable than this beautifully animated three-minute short.”  See the Video

 

Follow @retaileyeretail