Retail Stores
January 11, 2012
Returns are often emotionally charged events. Think about it: Customers return things that don’t fit, they don’t like, can’t afford, don’t need, don’t want or weren’t what they expected. For many customers, returns are embarrassing, filled with disappointment, frustration or, at the very least, a major inconvenience. How you handle this touchy situation could very well impact your customer’s decision to continue doing business with you.
January 10, 2012
One can only imagine what the people in this department store in Osaka, Japan were thinking when they came up with this advertising slogan for its sale. Shopper Zarina Yamaguchi thought it was “pretty funny” when she snapped this picture on Jan. 4th.
January 10, 2012
Boots, a British retailer, has been criticised by parents for selling sex toys in its shops within full view of children. The chemists' chain has prominently displayed a range of unpackaged sex aids close to health care products such as reading glasses, blood-pressure monitors and pregnancy testing kits.
January 10, 2012
Similar in many ways to Renew Australia's efforts to connect community projects with vacant buildings to revive derelict areas, popuphood in Oakland, Calif. is an urban initiative offering free retail space in unused buildings to local entrepreneurs, in yet another variation of the pop-up concept.
January 10, 2012
Momentum remains on the side of Family Dollar, as the company reported another quarter of record sales and profits and the opening of 101 units, which included its first stores in California. Family Dollar said earnings per share increased 17.2 percent, a penny better than analysts' forecast, compared with 58 cents the prior-year first quarter.
January 9, 2012
Apple will be opening new store-within-a-store locations in select Target locations later this year, enabling the company to expand its retail reach into smaller metro areas. The company plans to begin operating Apple-branded areas within 25 larger Target stores in locations which can't support a standalone Apple Store.
January 9, 2012
New Balance plans to open a New Balance Experience store in Boston. Situated at Copley Square, the new location will be the second "experience" location in the United States for New Balance. The company opened a store in New York in August 2011 that sells its clothing and footwear.
January 9, 2012
After getting women hooked on fancy handbags and expensive shoes in recent years, retailers are trying to rekindle a love affair with clothes. Department stores are leading the charge, with Saks, Nordstrom and Macy’s improving in-house clothing lines and refurbishing women’s departments.
January 6, 2012
Retailers salvaged December sales figures with deep discounts, but the results released yesterday could spell trouble for the coming year for both the industry and the economy at large. Sales at stores open at least a year at major retail chains rose 3.4 percent compared with December 2010, according to data compiled by Thomson Reuters, just above the 3.3 percent that analysts had expected.
January 5, 2012
Dollar General has benefited from cautious consumer spending in 2011, and it expects that momentum to continue in 2012. The company announced plans to open 625 new stores and add more than 6,000 new jobs in 2012. These new stores and jobs will be spread among Dollar General’s 38-state operating area, plus California and Massachusetts.
