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Commentary and Discussion From the Retail Community
Can Private Label Be a Success in Mass Market Cosmetics?
Private label cosmetics have traditionally been a difficult venture for retailers. But realizing that offering a private label or an exclusive beauty collection is an excellent way to set a…
Arresting Mall Developments
The United Kingdom is considering setting up temporary holding cells for alleged suspects of crime in British stores, supermarkets and shopping centers. What do you think of the idea of…
Grocers Try Clothes On for Sizeable Profits
Grocery stores are not eliminating aisles of other products to make room but there is no question that some operators are cautiously moving beyond pantyhose, white socks, underwear and t-shirts…
Borders Turns the Page
Borders Group, facing sluggish sales and measly margins, unveiled a comprehensive plan to revitalize its U.S. superstore business. The most strategic part of the plan involves severing its arrangement with…
Reaching the Gen Y Worker
They are impatient with long explanations, want immediate rewards and heaps of praise, and expect deeply involved bosses. They are willing to do grunt work if it’s clear what they…
Samsung Store Sells Experience, That’s It
Paco Underhill, the author of Why We Buy and the founder of Envirosell, told The New York Times today that consumers are looking to move past the clutter of the…
Online Shoes Taking Big Steps
Shoes were supposed to be one of those categories that wouldn’t sell on the web. The primarily hurdle was fit–the product had to be tried on and, in most cases,…
Custom Tailored Coupons
Consumers can now walk into one of 115 Price Chopper stores in six states and receive up to eight coupons based on their personal shopping habits by simply inserting the…
The Challenges of Managing Diversity
It is, in part, because of the protections contained in The Bill of Rights that so many have sought the refuge of America from the birth of the nation up…
BrainTrust Query: Will global forces cause the balance of power to shift back to suppliers in food retailing?
A Tuesday Wall Street Journal front-page article said that Navistar International, a company that has been supplying diesel engines to Ford for 30 years, stopped shipments to Ford temporarily in…
Take the Boy and Taylor Ham Out of N.J.
For years, research clearly showed that large numbers of consumers were relocating from the Northeast and the Rust Belt to other markets which all had regional foods that got left…
As the Michigan Grocery Chains Turn
Farmer Jack is continuing to tank and its stores (the current count stands at 66) have been put up for sale by The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. (A&P),…
GHQ: Against the Tide – Supermarkets Battle Alternative Channels
A decade ago, a Costco card hanging from a keychain was not a common sight. Nor were milk cartons at a dollar store or gourmet candy at Home Depot. People…
Does General Merchandise Need a Wellness/Environmental Mantra?
According to IRI’s Times & Trends report, all CPG sales through the three mass-market channels grew by 2.5 percent in dollars last year, but, in contrast, sales of GM products…
Fair Trade is Big Biz in U.K.
At the rate “fair trade” sales are going in the U.K., it may not be long before merchants such as Marks & Spencer and others begin to refer to the…
Wal-Mart Not Banking on Banking Anymore
Where Wal-Mart goes, controversy follows. Such was the case back in 2005 when the company made an application to get into the banking business with the acquisition of an industrial…
BrainTrust Query: Will New Mobile Phone Technologies Empower ‘Shopper Search’ for Local Retail?
Recently, the New York Times ran a story on the arrival of cell-phone shopping, and profiled some companies tapping into such services. One, NearbyNow, does this by prompting pedestrians to…
Layaway Makes a Comeback Online
Wal-Mart decided to do away with layaway and consumers who used the service were really disappointed. It seemed to many that few retailers (Kmart was one exception) understood their financial…
BrainTrust Query: Is Multi-Channel Integration Getting Short Shrift?
Nearly 80 percent of retail winners (those that outperform peers in comparable store sales growth) operate in multiple channels versus only 50 percent of retailers who perform worse than average,…
Avon Keeps Knocking
The armies of well-dressed, well-groomed ladies who used to ring the doorbell bearing samples of Avon cosmetics are about to be joined by a generation of new recruits. The New…
Safeway Looking to Buy
In the past, Safeway experienced some self-inflicted shrinking pains after acquiring supermarket chains in metro markets around Chicago, Dallas, Houston and Philadelphia. That has not deterred the company, which is…
