Retail Stores

As CVS sharpens its focus on customer health, the nation's second-largest drugstore chain will tweak its corporate name and stop the sale of tobacco nearly a month sooner than planned. CVS Caremark said it will now be known as CVS Health, effective immediately. The signs on its roughly 7,700 drugstores won't change, so the tweak may not register with shoppers. However, those customers will see a big change when they check out. The cigars and cigarettes that used to fill shelves have been replaced with nicotine gum and signs urging visitors to kick the tobacco habit.

J.C. Penney Company is launching a new online sports store on its e-commerce site that will be powered by Fanatics, an online retailer of officially licensed sports merchandise. Fanatics, which operates the e-commerce platform for hundreds of collegiate and professional sports teams, leagues and media sites, will provide fans with a selection of team sports apparel and merchandise at JCPenney.com, offering more than 300,000 licensed products spanning all the major sports leagues.

In June, I wrote that I'd decided I'm not in the e-commerce business. Actually, I concluded, I'm a brick-and-mortar retailer who happens to have a good website. The point was that I have to be careful about the resources I devote to building my web business because e-commerce sites can turn into black holes. But that was way back in June. Shortly after writing the post, I spent several days immersed in the brave new world wide web at the Internet Retailer Conference in Chicago. And with another couple of months to process, I've come to a different conclusion. 

It's been a rough couple of years for the "3 A's" (Abercrombie & Fitch, American Eagle, Aeropostale). The retailers have fallen out of favor with their core demographic — teens — resulting in declining sales and profits and, in certain cases, hits to their brand images. Teens are shifting their purchases to trendier, lower price fashion brands such as Forever 21 and H&M.

Staples will shut about 140 locations this year, part of a store-closing plan announced earlier, as the world's largest office-supply chain responds to online competition. Staples shut 80 outlets in North America in the fiscal second quarter. Net income in the three months ended Aug. 2 dropped 20 percent to $82 million, as $101 million was spent on closing locations, the Framingham, Mass.-based company said in a statement today. Expansion by web-based rivals such as Amazon.com has spurred reorganizations across the retail industry, including the merger of stationery suppliers Office Depot with OfficeMax. 

Target is keeping its doors open later at more than half of its U.S. stores, hoping to snag guests who are putting off shopping until well after dark and might have gone elsewhere. The chain's nearly 1,800 U.S. stores had typically opened at 8 a.m. and closed at 10 p.m. on weekdays and Saturdays and at 9 p.m. on Sundays. The new hours will keep stores open until 10 p.m. or 11 p.m. on Sundays and until 11 p.m. or midnight on other days. The hours will vary by store; some, for example, will only have extended hours on weekends. 

A day after announcing a disappointing second quarter, Wal-Mart has made an aggressive holiday promise to its customers: the world's largest retailer says it will staff every cash register from the day after Thanksgiving through the days just before Christmas during peak shopping times. Wal-Mart's "checkout promise" is aimed at addressing lengthy waits in checkout lines. "We feel good about price and having the top gifts of the season, so the next priority is about getting customers in and out of the stores quickly," Duncan Mac Naughton, Wal-Mart's chief merchandising officer, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

Wal-Mart thought shoppers would like the opportunity to use a smartphone app to scan items they want to buy as they walk through store aisles. In theory, they could speed through self-checkout. But customers couldn't figure out how to work the Scan & Go app, so Wal-Mart nixed it. Instead of looking at the app as a failure, though, Wal-Mart took what it learned from Scan & Go to create another service: it found that customers like being able to track their spending, an insight that became the impetus for a national program that enables shoppers to store electronic receipts.

Wet Seal said it will celebrate the opening of 31 Wet Seal Plus stores across the country on Aug. 16. The Foothill Ranch, Calif.-based apparel company discontinued its Arden B brand and converted its 31 Arden B stores into Wet Seal Plus stores. The brand's other 23 locations were transitioned into regular Wet Seals. The change, in the works since April, has helped Wet Seal "expand in the growing junior plus market," said the company's Chief Executive John Goodman in a news release. 

Amazon.com unveiled a credit card reader and mobile app for brick-and-mortar businesses on Wednesday, marking the latest step by the U.S. online retailer to expand its presence in the physical world. The move pits Amazon against a slew of rivals, including startup Square, which popularized a payments dongle that allowed small and midsized businesses like food trucks, coffee shops and personal trainers to quickly accept credit and debit cards.