Going Down

The end of the big store era may soon be here.

That’s the message of a research note published by Goldman Sachs analysts on Tuesday cutting their investment rating on shares of Walmart. Shoppers are increasingly turning to the web or to smaller, more conveniently located stores, cutting into the market share of big-box retailers like Walmart and Target, the analysts wrote.

Big stores like Walmart and Target for several quarters now, the analysts wrote. That suggests shoppers are interested more in convenience than in having access to the kind of product variety Walmart and Target offer.

That's partly because online shopping has made it much easier for people to find whatever they want at a cheap price, so they're less likely to schlep to a store just for its vast selection, the analysts wrote.

Sure enough, both Walmart and Target have struggled lately. Target's profit fell 16 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, and U.S. same-store sales -- a metric of retail health that tracks sales at stores open at least a year -- fell 0.3 percent. Same-store sales have fallen in 12 of the past 20 quarters at Walmart's U.S. stores, according to data-tracking firm Retail Metrics.

Walmart might already see the writing on the wall. The company announced last week that its U.S. CEO Bill Simon would step down after years of poor store performance. WalmartLabs, the retailer’s tech-development arm, has bought at least 14 companies in the past few years -- largely to get the tech talent it needs to build up its online offerings, according to TechCrunch. 

It has been aggressively touting its site and apps that help customers use their phones and computers to shop.

Walmart hasn't kept up with the online juggernaut, Amazon. Walmart did about $10 billion in web sales sales last year, compared to Amazon’s nearly $68 billion. 

Walmart’s global internet sales grew faster than Amazon’s last year, but that was after a decade of struggle, according to Charles Fishman, the author of “The Wal-Mart Effect.”

Leaving India

Carrefour, one the world's largest retail chains, is shutting its business in India less than four years after it opened its first store in the country.

Carrefour S.A. is a French multi-national retailer, headquartered in  Boulogne Billancourt, France, in Greater Paris. It is one of the largest hypermarket chains in the world (with 1,452 hypermarkets at the end of 2011), the fourth largest retail group in the world in terms of revenue.

Carrefour operates mainly in Europe, Argentina, Brazil, China, Dominican Republic, United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, but also has shops in North Africa and other parts of Asia, with most stores being of smaller size than hypermarket or even supermarket. Carrefour means "crossroads" and "public square" in French. Previously the company head office was in Levallois-Perret, also in Greater Paris.

It currently operates five cash and carry wholesale stores in India.

The French retailer has been exiting under performing markets, including Singapore, Malaysia and Greece, under chief executive Georges Plassat's three-year revival plan.

It has said it wants to focus on key markets in Europe, China and Brazil.

India opened up its multi-brand retail sector to foreign firms in 2012.

But it has put preconditions, including those on local sourcing and infrastructure investment, and has also left the final decision on whether to allow foreign companies to open stores to individual state governments.

Many analysts have said the pre-conditions have deterred foreign companies from entering the sector.

The Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) - which has recently formed a new government in India - had opposed the move arguing that the arrival of big name supermarkets may hurt the small retailers in the country.

Happy Meals Herion

Pittsburgh drug detectives say they arrested a McDonald’s worker who was selling heroin in Happy Meals.

The District Attorney Narcotics Enforcement team received information that the employee was selling the heroin at the McDonald’s restaurant at 6361 Penn Avenue in the Bakery Square section of East Liberty.

Undercover agents, along with officers from Swissvale, North Versailles, and McKees Rocks were able to set up a controlled buy at the restaurant Wednesday afternoon.

Officers say customers looking for heroin were instructed to go through the drive-thru and say, “I’d like to order a toy.”

The customer would then be told to proceed to the first window where they would be handed a Happy Meal box containing heroin.

The customer would pay for the transaction at the first window and leave without having to stop at the second window.

It is unknown at this point how long this process had been going on or how many like transactions may have taken place prior to today.

An employee from East Pittsburgh was arrested in the bust.

Police say 10-stamp bags of heroin were recovered inside of the Happy Meal box and another 50 bags were recovered from the suspect.

Another McDonald’s employee was also arrested earlier this month for selling heroin in Murrysville.

Detectives say they don’t think this heroin bust is related to the potentially lethal batches of heroin being sold in Western Pennsylvania.

At least 22-deaths have been blamed on that potent, Fentanyl-laced heroin.

Fentanyl (also known as fentanil, brand names Sublimaze, Actiq, Durogesic, Duragesic, Fentora, Matrifen, Haldid, Onsolis, Instanyl, Abstral, Lazanda and others) is a potent, synthetic opioid analgesic with a rapid onset and short duration of action. It is a strong agonist at the μ-opioid receptors. 

Historically it has been used to treat breakthrough pain and is commonly used in pre-procedures as a pain reliever as well as an anesthetic in combination with a benzodiazepine.

Fentanyl is approximately 100 times more potent than morphine, with 0.1 milligrams (mg) of fentanyl approximately equivalent to 10 mg of morphine and 75 mg of pethidine (meperidine) in analgesic activity.

Opera Land

A McDonald's outlet in Australia has begun playing classical musical and opera late at night to deter young people from loitering around the restaurant.

Fed up with their outlet's nocturnal transformation into an unofficial youth club, the store adopted the tactic a few weeks ago and says it has significantly reduced the number of loiterers, particularly around the car park. The strategy has reportedly been tried before by a local council at a car park in Australia, though previous efforts involved blaring songs by Barry Manilow.

Matthew Watson, the operations manager at the Mt Annan McDonald's on the outskirts of Sydney, said the music had been a successful deterrent.

"We've noticed a reduction in the number of young people hanging around, but we'll have to reassess it properly in a couple of weeks," the store's operations manager, Matthew Watson, told the MacArthur Chronicle newspaper.

"We play a range of classical and opera music and so far it seems to be working."

The tactic drew a mixed response on social media, with some locals saying the music was played too loud and others saying "it might bring a bit of class to the area".

"They turn it up really loud when youth are hanging around the car park," wrote Janeen Brady on the local newspaper's Facebook page. "It woke me up at 1 am Tuesday night and it's only going to get worse as Xmas approaches."

A comment by Erin Cox, said: "I may just stay longer. I have no issue with classical music it's quite nice."

Another comment, from Stef Awns, noted: "It's a shame that classical music supposedly has this impact on people".

JcPenney Posed to Make Comeback

by Laura Heffner

As I had hoped, JcPenney would get it's act together and try for a comeback.  With Mike Ullman back at the helm JcPenney is fighting to save it's life from certain doom.  He has started to match up the online and store inventory which confused customers.  By re-syncing the store to it's online offerings, it's winning customers back.  

Ullman has decided to keep Johnson's "store within a store" such as Martha Stewart and Levi's format though it has not been quite completed but conceptualized.  He says by the holiday season, this will be up and running.  

Sales and promotions are coming back with a vengeance.  Though they feel that this is deceiving the customers by using this promoting techniques, if the customers feel they are getting a bargain (and I have to argue that it was less expensive to shop there prior to Johnson's changes) that they will return.  

Changing management.  Ullman is only there to bring JcPenney back to life and then attract a new CEO as well as develop a 5-year plan.  They are hoping that bringing in new management will also bring back and soothe investors as well.  

Regardless of how it is done, I am relieved that this favorite store of mine has woken up and smelled the coffee.  My fingers are crossed they are successful.  

Brand Demise

Recently 24/7 Wall St. has predicted ten brands that will disappear in 2014.  Reading the list, some make sense.  Martha Stewart Living Magazine - Really, Martha, who has time or resources to raise their own speciality chickens, grow various plants for natural dyes to make the most fabulous Easter eggs for the holidays?  The exhausted public just goes to Wal-Mart and grabs a box of PAAS and goes on with their day.  Few of us have the ability to hire staff to look after our prize chickens.

Nook - Makes sense, tablets are overtaking e-readers as they offer much more functionality.  Amazon and Apple are taking over this market.  I for one am a convert to a tablet.  Much more convenient than a laptop and am a complete application junkie.  When they get an app that can make me breakfast, I'll be in heaven.

There were others but the one that stood out to me was J.C. Penney which saddens but doesn't surprise me.  As a lifelong customer of Penney's, I was disappointed when they went to the new pricing scheme.  Penneys is not Apple.  The store does not possess a product unique to them so trying to give it that feel, backfired.  The monthly glossy book like catalogues advertising their deals did not entice me even when they color-coordinated the pages.  I was flipping through it looking for the coupons that I loved so much.  After two months, the advertisements went into the recycling without so much as a peek from me.  It is no surprise that Penney's losses are in the billions.  I haven't shopped there but twice since they changed.

Before they started redoing the store interiors to appear more trendy and posh such as hanging black chandeliers over certain women's fashions as if the set of Twilight had just been brought forth, the store was always teeming with customers.  It was a challenge to find a register without a line (I figured out that one back in women's intimates usually was the best bet).  I did almost all my shopping for clothes and household items at this very store.  Now admist the bright lights and the new makeup counters with their gleaming white marble floors, it's a ghost town.  No one is in Penney's.  Oh and why did they turn up the heat in every Penney's I've been into in the last year?  Are they trying to save on A/C or is that some other type of gimmick that they figure will entice you to buy what?  Fans?

Penney's offered lower-middle income families affordable products that were of better quality than the massive retailers.  We can't afford Macy's and their designers especially in this economy but we don't want to go to the other end of the spectrum and buy cheaply made clothes from a discount house that fall apart in a few months.  I'm cheap but I like good quality.  Penney's was the middle of the road for me.  Maybe the coupons and the sales didn't save me much more than the current pricing method (though I swear it did), but I perceived it as a big savings.  Wow, I save $125.32! as it used to say on the bottom of my receipt.  So now I go to Kohls which send me coupons almost every day and when I do, I pass the mall and look upon it wistfully, hoping against hope that the powers that be at my former favorite clothing store, finally wakes up and smells the coffee or the profit losses at least.

I for one hope they can save Penney's and put it back to rights.  Take down those looming black chandeliers and rip out the bright makeup counters.  If I wanted fancy, I'd head to Macy's or Elder Beerman but I just wanted practical.

UniQlo

click to enlarge

Flagship Store Grand Opening - NYC - Japanese owned

89,000 square feet - like a Walmart super center

34th Street Store - opens 10-21
5th Street Store - opens 10-14
NY SOHO Store - planned



CEO, Tadashi Yanai

Exciting New Stores for New York
Tadashi says, "We are also planning some new and exciting developments in the United States. This fall, we will open our second global flagship store in New York, on Fifth Avenue, and a megastore with retail space in excess of 3,300 square meters on New York's 34th Street, the city's most lucrative shopping district. While the UNIQLO brand is yet to be widely recognized in the United States, our reputation for high-quality, basic casual wear is growing steadily year by year."

Why is Japan opening up their Flagship Store in a country where there are so many buyers unemployed?