Retail Industry Archive

Safeway has a problem, but the supermarket chain is doing what it can to surmount it. The latest part of the solution is construction of the company’s first store designed to meet the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification standards for sustainability developed by the U.S. Green Building Council. To get its LEED certification, the 60,000-square-foot store Safeway is...

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While Wal-Mart, Tesco and Safeway test scaled down grocery store formats on the West Coast to service consumers who prefer quick and easy shopping, East Cost food retailers are bulking up convenience store concepts to make their own play for shoppers who want to purchase basic food items without the hassle of navigating big supermarkets or supercenters. Giant-Carlisle, a division of Ahold USA,...

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Lauren Conrad of the MTV television series The Hills is teaming up with Kohl’s Corp. on a new apparel line that targets younger consumers. Initially, the line, LC Lauren Conrad, will launch in October at 300 stores as a “contemporary lifestyle brand,” according to a company statement, and Don Brennan, Kohl’s senior vice president, reiterated the line’s position when he called...

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Tesco has decided to hold back on its expansion into Northern California as losses in the United States operation widened due to economic distress in the West and its inability to add stores as rapidly as planned to help pay for a distribution center and logistical system designed to support many more stores than the company has in operation. Although it originally intended to open about 90 of...

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Warehouse clubs and office supply stores are withstanding a challenge for their small business customers from what might seem an unlikely rival, a newly enhanced Dollar Tree web site. Indeed, the dollar store operator is not only challenging better established retailers for small business customers but for sales generated by organizations and individual bulk buyers, too. In many ways, the...

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Ending months of speculation, General Growth Properties, the second-largest U.S. mall owner behind Simon Property Group, declared bankruptcy last Thursday in the biggest real estate failure in U.S. history. Prompting the filing was the realization by management that the company had virtually no hope of refinancing either its past-due debts or its upcoming maturities in the current credit...

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Designer Rachel Roy and her partners at Jones Apparel Group are looking for greener, or at least broader, pastures and so are creating a brand for Macy’s. Formerly Roy’s label was found only at luxury department stores such as Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus and Saks, but the new line, which Jones Apparel Group is careful to call a diffusion brand, will be a Macy’s exclusive. For years, Macy’s...

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Meijer keeps adding socially relevant new products and initiatives as a conspicuous element in a growth strategy that it is pursuing despite the recession and the company’s heavy commitment to states, particularly its home state of Michigan, that have been among the hardest hit in the economic downturn. Yesterday, the retailer introduced Meijer Naturals, a new 75-product line that ranges from...

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Trying to determine just what Best Buy will accomplish with its store reorganization is difficult. The company is reluctant to definitively explain its actions and goals, substituting the mantra: We want to get employees out in front of customers. Now, certainly there it truth in that, but, in practice, its the effects look like this: Best Buy, with the demise of Circuit City, wants to make...

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Dollar-discount chain Family Dollar Stores might not have any major new store-opening plans in the works, at least that management is revealing, but the chain is certainly in a good position to expand. As some retailers close stores while others like Blockbuster flirt with outright failure, the Matthews, N.C.-based chain could see a lot of room for growth. It couldn’t come at a better...

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