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Jeff Green Partners

A LEADER IN RETAIL REAL ESTATE FEASIBILITY

jgreen@jeffgreenpartners.com

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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.

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.

Men are buying up these $1,200 sneakers

Kathryn Vasel / CNN MONEY – They can be colorful, shiny, blinged out and even fuzzy. And they’re showing up on men’s feet around the world.

Luxury spending is slumping this year, but one area continues to have a strong foothold: shoes. And while designer shoes tend to conjure up images of red-bottomed stilettos and pointy leather heels, much of the current demand is for men’s sneakers in flashy styles.

Shoe designer Giuseppe Zanotti, who launched his first sneaker in 2012, said the demand for high-end kicks surprised him.

C&W Inks Deal with Microsoft for Manhattan Flagship Store

Keith Loria / Commercial Property Executive – The Microsoft Corp. has agreed to sign a lease for a flagship store at 677 Fifth Ave. in Manhattan, occupying the entire ground through fourth floors and a portion of the lower level of the building.

Further details about the size or the company’s plans were not revealed, although Microsoft’s stores normally feature PCs running Windows 8, laptops, smartphones, Surface and Windows tablets, Xbox consoles and accessories bundled with personalized customer service.

“It’s always good to have visibility from Wall Street,” Jeff Green, president of Jeff Green Partners, told Commercial Property Executive. “Go back to the early days of Bed, Bath and Beyond, and analysts didn’t know who they were and when they put a store in SOHO, their stock went up really quickly.”