Merchandising

Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, is adding thousands of items to its shelves, including inexpensive ones, and is asking dollar-store suppliers to create small, under-a-dollar packages for its stores, too. In areas with high unemployment, Wal-Mart is grouping together its less than $1 items in a clear challenge to the dollar stores.

Sears, saddled with extra space in its cavernous Sears department stores, is joining with hot fashion chain Forever 21 to expand the store-within-a-store concept. The move will give Sears rental revenue and also supply some much-needed fashion pizzazz for the retailer, which has been trying for years to make its apparel business, especially for young women, more appealing.

Borders Group Inc. President Michael Edwards says he has hit on a solution for reviving his money-losing bookstore chain: Be less like a bookstore.

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Wal-Mart has been candid about its mistakes in the way it pared back assortment in recent months. In a presentation for investors, Bill Simon, CEO of its U.S. division, shed some light on how the retailer is hoping to win back the shoppers it sent away.

Gary Friedman, Restoration Hardware's chairman and co-CEO, says the brand has destroyed the previous iteration of itself, clearing the way to express itself in a never-before-seen fashion. A statement about the relaunch is in a 56-page direct mail piece that went out in late August and is also on the company's redesigned website, which proclaims the retailer to be "reinvented, remodeled, reborn."

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Target has come up with a promising comeback plan. Two bold initiatives now under way — rolling out fresh groceries in more of its stores and, starting this fall, offering 5 percent discounts on nearly all purchases made with Target REDcards — should help a lot.

In an attempt to win over fashionable young women, J.C. Penney Co. is going to try running with a faster crowd. This week, the Plano, Texas-based retailer unveiled an unconventional collaboration with Mango MNG Holding SL, the closely-held Barcelona chain known for whipping up cutting edge looks that go from design studio to store shelves in as little as four weeks.

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