Andrew Kuhn / MLive – GRAND RAPIDS, MI — Over the past two years, Black Friday has gained a solid six-hour foothold into Thanksgiving. This year, the line has moved from prime time to supper time. Most big box retailers and department stores, from Target to Kohl’s, will open at 6 p.m. on the holiday. […]
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Why Amazon keeps cutting prices for consumer goods
Jennifer Booton / MarketWatch – Amazon.com Inc. is gradually lowering prices across several major consumer goods categories in an effort to bolster its retail business and better compete with offline retailers, a recent analysis of price trends conducted by Bernstein Research has revealed.
As more people buy consumer health, personal care, pet care and baby products from diapers to shampoo online, Amazon AMZN, +0.58% is “cutting prices to achieve scale,” Bernstein analysts said.
This could challenge industry margins for offline retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores WMT, +0.26% , Walgreen Co. WAG, +2.27% and Target Corp. TGT, +0.57% , and require them to adapt to a more “dynamic and deflationary online pricing environment,” they said.
The La La Land store offers as much entertainment as merchandise.
Beth Karlin / Shopping Centers Today – Anyone wanting to slip into the mellowed bliss of la-la land should probably avoid the La La Land store, on Hollywood Boulevard and Orange Street, in Los Angeles, its name notwithstanding. On the other hand, if one seeks immersion into the sensory-overload excitement of multimedia interactivity, then this new retail concept could be the very first place to go.
When brothers Gill and Ofer Zahavi first envisioned this video-centric Hollywood -experience, which opened in June, they were following this formula: Entertainment plus Hollywood flash equals retail traffic. Their calculations could hardly have been better: Gill Zahavi says he estimates that upwards of 10,000 awed visitors cross the threshold of this all-things Hollywood memorabilia store daily. “It’s exceeding our expectations,” he said.
Marilyn Monroe Spa aims to consolidate the beauty business.
Beth Karlin / Shopping Centers Today – The mom-and-pop nail salons and spas that populate many malls and retail streets will be facing stiff competition from Marilyn Monroe Spa, which is planning on opening thousands of units around the world over the next 20 years. Marilyn Monroe can offer landlords a single point of contact for what has typically been a scattered business.
“This is a major game changer for developers, landlords and managers,” said John Crossman, president of shopping center brokerage Crossman & Co. “Those who have been frustrated by dealing with different nail salon owners at every mall will be able to deal with one company for many of its malls.”
The growing respectability of used-clothing stores such as Fillmore & Fifth has earned them a place in the mall.
Beth Karlin / Shopping Centers Today – The sale of used clothing, whether called secondhand or vintage or gently used, is exceedingly popular now. And with celebrities like Kim Kardashian having taken to cleaning out their closets by selling their secondhand duds on eBay, we may well be at the place where used apparel meets celebrity auction meets spring cleaning.
To be sure, the concept of reselling used apparel is hardly any newer than the clothing itself. In 1991 Chip Gergen and Gerald Block saw they could profit from reselling secondhand garments, so they co-founded Berkeley, Calif.–based Crossroads Trading Co., which now operates 35 stores, most of them in California. The chain is about the size of Tucson, Ariz.–based Buffalo Exchange, another secondhand up-and-comer, which has 30 stores around the country. Thus neither of these is big enough just yet to distract segment giant Plato’s Closet, which caters to teens and tweens through some 300 stores nationwide. And yet that may only imply that these hungry smaller competitors have nowhere to go but up.
For earliest doorbuster deals, skip Thanksgiving dinner
Justine Griffin / Herald-Tribune – And we thought they couldn’t go any earlier.
Some of the nation’s largest retail chains — Walmart, Best Buy, Macy’s and nearly a dozen others — will open their doors earlier than ever on Thanksgiving Day this holiday season — to the chagrin of some workers stuck with that duty.
Leading the charge are Best Buy, Toys R Us and J.C. Penney, with electronics, toys and department stores offering doorbuster deals as early as 5 p.m.
Macy’s, Kohl’s, Target and Walmart will open their stores across the country at 6 p.m.
