Kurt Barnard
Kurt Barnard
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Everybody is worried about a soft landing for the economy and a contraction of consumer spending. And come Christmas it will be far less exciting than a year ago. The high cost at the gas pump is beginning to take its toll and for a lot of families spending an extra $20-to-$25 a month on gasoline means spending that much less on stores.
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So far I think he has done quite well under very difficult and trying circumstances, ... He's making the store more appealing and easier to shop, and has been reviewing the product mix for the last several months now and we have seen some very favorable shopper response.
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February is a testing month for spring, and the results have not been spectacular, ... There seems to be a sense of foreboding that while spring is likely to be a smidgen better than we have seen in past months, it is not going to be a barn-burner.
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It is a coming back down to earth. About two or three months ago, the world was swept up by the notion that the economic recession is over and the good times are rolling again. That meant consumers would be knocking down the doors of retailers the way they did a few years ago. But guess what? It ain't happening.
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June was a difficult month for retailers and it's also typically a month during which comparable sales are driven by discount sales.
core profitable
It's not a core business, but (gardening) is a very profitable part of the business.
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E-commerce is growing exponentially, and it is not at all unreasonable to think that simply because the store essentially, or a whole horizon of stores, happens to be right on your desk, that shopping is made so much easier than before,
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The blizzard was a serious setback for retailers, especially since the Presidents Day weekend is a major day for sales. Most of the malls and independent stores were shut in the Northeast.
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The bigger it gets, the smaller the percentage growth will be. Let's say that when you add 10 new stores to 100 stores, you grow the business 10 percent. When you add 10 stores to 3,000 stores, the growth isn't obvious.
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The August figures this time are basically not very reliable for anything whatsoever. A lot of the Labor Day activity will come in September this year.
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There's tremendous demand for anything related to gardening, horticulture. It means dollar signs at the cash register.
comfort industry rest
The rest of the industry can take comfort from Wal-Mart's projections,
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These numbers come on the back of heavy discounting. The back-to-school period also fueled results. Beyond that, the situation last year in July wasn't good. So retailers were up against much easier comparisons.
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These two companies give a must-have lesson for all retailers. Shaper Image has seen sales jump in the double-digits because they keep innovating and offering new, fun and useful products.