Cover Story: One Step at a Time

"A lot of what you pay for to run a retail website is product catalog related and tied to how many things you carry," says Nakfoor. "We're undergoing a process now where we're looking at, 'OK, what have we carried for two years that's costing us more to carry than we're getting out of it?'"

Meijer also is refining its assortments to focus on what's selling. "We're taking a strategic approach at looking at the categories that we didn't offer right away and evaluating them to see, 'OK, now is it time? Can we do business in this category?' And if we can, what subcategories and parts of that category make the most sense," Nakfoor says.