Saw this in the New York Times and I had to chuckle: The chief executive of Wal-Mart Stores, H. Lee Scott Jr., said yesterday that the introduction of upscale products, like silk camisoles and 300-thread-count sheets, had proved “choppier than it should be” and that the company had “moved too far too fast” with fashionable clothing. “What we did was overload the fashion part,” he said, by introducing new trendy …
Wal-Mart’s Quest To Be More Sophisticated
Uniforms at retail help define a brand. Last week I was at Hotel Monaco in Salt Lake City where the staff wears tie-dyed oxford cloth shirts. It's easy for me to feel at home in such a place. According to the Houston Chronicle, the world's largest retailer is now looking to spiff up its outfits. For decades, a humble blue smock or vest has been required dress for employees at Wal-Mart Stores, conveying the retailer's …
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Wal-Mart Goes Shopping For A New Ad Agency
That's the big news from the ad world today. Ad Age and Adweek have respective articles. Currently, the bulk of the account is split between Austin's GSD&M and Kansas City's Bernstein-Rein. And for a long time, too, as Adweek mentions: GSD&M has worked for the retailer for the past 19 years. Bernstein-Rein has been on the roster for more than 30 years. And Bernstein's about to build a new big swanky headquarters, aka …
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People Pushing Apple’s Buttons
Wired looks at one of the greatest retail success stories in history. Apple says its stores are now making more than $1 billion in sales per quarter. Just two years ago, the stores were making $1 billion a year -- and at that time they were the fastest-growing retail operation in history, beating the previous record holder The Gap to $1 billion annual sales in just three years, according to Ron Johnson, the executive …
Bad Pharmacist
From South Florida Sun Sentinel: For years, Janey Karp has battled depression and anxiety with the help of prescription drugs. Though millions of Americans do the same, Karp admits she is intensely private and can't help but feel stigmatized for needing medication to feel normal. So when the 53-year-old Palm Beach resident read the Walgreens printout attached to her prescription last week for the sleep aid Ambien, …
Peroni Me
WXIA News 11: Free beer while shopping -- it’s a new idea brewing in Atlanta. While shoppers age 21-and-over browse $150 jeans at the stylish Bill Hallman Boutique in Virginia Highland, they can sip on a beer imported from Italy. The lure might sound like exactly what’s expected from an upscale, designer clothing store. The wealth of foot traffic already flowing through the Virginia Highland neighborhood is …
Gold Coast Retailer Unafraid To Wear Politics On Sleeve
NYT: The silvery mannequin in the window sports a sexy black sequined skirt with a butterfly tail and shear fringed halter top, her wrists weighted with $1,000 worth of Swarovski crystal bracelets. But above the matching scarf wrapped around her neck, where the head should be, sits a big red stop sign. n "Stop" as in "Stop Domestic Spying," the white block letters splayed across the plate-glass window. It seems a …
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Russian Store Stinks
Toronto Star: A gas attack in a St. Petersburg home-supply store on one of the busiest shopping days of the year sickened scores of people yesterday in an incident that police called likely motivated by a commercial dispute or blackmail attempt. St. Petersburg police spokesman Vyacheslav Stepchenko said the gas appeared to be methyl mercaptan, which smells like rotten cabbage and is both naturally occurring and …
