Howard Davidowitz
Howard Davidowitz
focus growth negative segment
If you are in a no-growth segment or a negative growth segment, your focus has to be on cost-cutting.
emphasis
If you look at what's going on in retail, there's more and more emphasis on price.
customer generally sales target
If you look at Helen of Troy's customer base, sales are generally strong. Wal-Mart sales are up, Target sales are up,
advertising amount buying enhance fantastic margin marketing money save tremendous
If you've got one name, Macy's, you can save a tremendous amount of money in supplies, marketing cost, advertising umbrella, promotions. You enhance your margin because you're buying more. It's just a fantastic way to do things,
biggest customers feed game gets million name traffic
In retailing, the whole name of the game is to feed off your competitors' footsteps. Wal-Mart is the biggest traffic generator around. It gets over 150 million customers a week.
circuit city compete price
Circuit City just hasn't been able to compete on price or variety,
apparel decides designs fall flat great needs present target
If Kmart decides apparel is critical, and it can make it a success, it needs to do what Target has done: Present great designs that are unique, well priced and well presented. Otherwise, this will fall flat on its face,
challenge couple deal inwardly next opportunity puts
In next couple of years, the deal puts P&G at a disadvantage. They'll be inwardly focused. The integration challenge here is massive. That's an opportunity for competitors.
bigger corporate earnings entire issue retail space spending weak
The bigger issue for the entire retail space is that we have a weak economy, unemployment is rampant, corporate spending is down and corporate earnings are not improving.
appeals becomes design embellish ethnic jeans plain product strategy suddenly
Stuckey's strategy would be to take a plain low-priced product like jeans and embellish it with design. Suddenly it becomes a 'fashion' jeans and appeals to a new ethnic audience. It's the same strategy with 7,
assume good package sell trying
As a negotiating strategy, I would assume Saks is trying to package the whole thing -- to sell the good with the bad.
brand built single survive
The brand as we know it is dead. Any brand that's built exclusively around a single personality can't survive something like this.
advertising business company losses magazine smaller
The business is getting smaller -- the advertising, the TV, the magazine -- everything is going down. This company is not going to go away tomorrow. However, the losses are getting scary.
both coming discount growth prices sector signs soft target therefore
Back-to-school has been very soft and therefore prices are coming down. The discount signs are already being made. Both Wal-Mart and Target have had anemic growth over the summer. The only sector that has done well is luxury.