No Turn On Red

Express Lane for May 14, 2009

Tom — Thu, 14 May 2009 16:35:37 +0000

Few things on my radar this morning that I want to share:

Great post by Get Elastic that analyzes the checkout login process of several of the top converting sites. New users resist registering and want to check out without creating an account. Very good data and thoughts there for anyone working in e-commerce.

Not all the news about the retail industry should be bad. Seeking Alpha has a list of 10 retailers with stronger than expected first quarter sales. A slight glimmer of positive news in the midst of all the doom and gloom about the economy that is still lingering.

For the designers in the house, I really love going through the sites at Design Meltdown. Always an inspirational gallery site. Last week they posted a new collection of “super clean” websites. Just because the design is clean doesn’t mean it has to be bland. Good inspiration there.

Jeremiah Owyang is live blogging from the Corporate Social Networking Conference in Amsterdam and has a recap of the panel on digital natives. Kids born after 1980, who grew up with the level of technology, should be looked at differently by businesses and brands. This is an important segment of consumers that retailers have to be aware of and cater to. Teen retailers have been forced to get it, but how will retailers react as this generation continues to grow older?

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16 E-Commerce Sites Ready for Valentine’s Day

Tom — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 21:46:38 +0000

Valentine’s Day is just a few days away. I wanted to see how various retailers are promoting the holiday in order to see how they are working to increase last minute sales. Below you’ll see screenshots of various e-commerce sites that are ready for the Holiday: from department stores, to jewelry, candy, and lingerie.

I find it interesting to see a holiday like Valentine’s Day play out over the web. On one hand, there is the traditional retail focus on jewelry, flowers, and accessories but they are interspersed with free shipping promotions, shipping guidelines, and gift finders. Throw in a lot of red, red, and more red and you have the state of e-commerce as we run full force into the Valentine’s Day holiday.

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Macy’s cutting 7,000 jobs

Tom — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 19:58:57 +0000

Another reduction in the retail workforce: this time it is Macy’s announcing a 4% reduction in their workforce, slashing 7,000 jobs. 5,100 of those are at the store level.

“Reducing our workforce is an unfortunate outcome of the current economic environment, and I am frustrated that so many of our people will be unable to move forward with us as we proceed into a very exciting future for Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s,” Macy’s CEO Terry Lundgren said in a statement.

The retailer estimates the restructuring efforts will reduce previously planned expenses by about $400 million a year beginning in 2010.

This is the latest in a line of retail layoffs - last week Home Depot, Starbucks, Williams-Sonoma, and Target all announced layoffs. Best Buy has also announced that they will be cutting workforce in their corporate headquarters later this month.

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Starbucks announces layoffs, more store closings

Tom — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 04:21:39 +0000

As speculated last week, Starbucks has announced layoffs and another round of store closings. For the quarter ending December 28, the coffee retailer announced a 69% drop in net income and a 10% drop in same store sales.

These store closings are on top of the 600 company-owned stores the chain closed in 2008. 200 of the closings will be in the United States with 100 closing oversees.

CEO Howard Schultz also announced that he is reducing his base pay to $10,000 from $1.2 milllion.

Follow reaction to the announcement in the comments posted over at Starbucks Gossip.

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More Retail Layoffs

Tom — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 16:36:37 +0000

With the disappointing Holiday season behind us, the layoffs and retail store closings are continuing to mount:

Today, Home Depot has announced that they are closing their line of Expo home design centers and trimming support staff, resulting in 7,000 reduction in staff. With both home sales and the economy down, shoppers aren’t looking for high end home design solutions right now. The retailer is quick to note that the layoffs will not impact any customer service positions at the Home Depot proper chain.

It appears that their Expo stores weren’t performing well during the housing boom, so it’s no surprise that they would be doing even worse during the current economic conditions.

Another victim of the housing slump is Williams-Sonoma. On Friday, the retailer announced an 18% reduction in their workforce. In addition to stores being effected by the layoffs, the retailer will also close a call center in Pennsylvania and a distribution center in Memphis. I think the high end housewares stores have been hurt badly by both the economic downturn and mid-market retailers like JCPenney and Kohl’s.

Starbucks, who closed 600 stores in 2008, is expected to eliminate 1,000 jobs at their corporate headquarters and reducing district managers and field employees. The published report, prepared by investment firm McAdams Wright Ragen, speculates that these layoffs will happen in early February and won’t effect store-level barista positions.

And don’t forget that last week Circuit City announced that they are closing all US operations with job losses effecting up to 35,000 people.

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Circuit City fails to find buyer; will close all US stores

Tom — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 16:17:04 +0000

It is now reported the Circuit City has failed to find a buyer willing to take over their store operations and instead has reached a deal with a liquidator. The electronics retailer filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in November and closed 155 stores in Q4 of 2008. They will now close the remaining 567 stores in the United States. Adding to the growing US job loss numbers, up to 35,000 people will be affected by these store closings.

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Interesting iPhone App for Retailer Managers

Tom — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 10:05:12 +0000

Just came across this new application in iTunes called iRetailer (caution: link takes you to the Apple iTunes store). It is a task organizer and note-taking application that is geared towards retail managers allowing them to divide tasks into categories such as people, operations, and merchandising.

From their description:

I was tired of using note applications that were either too complex or just didn’t do a good job. I built my own app to take care of simple task throughout the day. You have enough to do throughout your day without having to ‘chase notes.’ Have your list with you at all times. I have saved so much time just through the development phase, by using iRetailer.

I don’t know how well the application works, but I can totally support the idea. When I was involved at the store level of retail, I always had a notepad on me that had to-do lists and goals. Sales targets, merchandising objectives, and daily operations coverage were always in my pocket. The concept of an iPhone app is intriguing to me because it centralizes the information a bit more.

Good idea for an app. If anyone tries it out and has feedback on it, I’d love to know.

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Express Lane for January 12

Tom — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 18:44:49 +0000

The Retail Email blog has a roundup of this morning’s e-commerce email blasts with attention being paid to today’s email from Saks. The e-mail, entited “8 Great Reasons to Shop Saks.com“, calls attention to some of the new and improved functionality that the retailer has added to their site. Great way to call attention to improvements on the site that may have been implemented over a period of time or that the users may not have realized are there. I think it gets them to explore new areas of the store that they may not have been aware of before.

StorefrontBacktalk has some of the early numbers from this year’s National Retail Federation annual show. Registration and exhibitors are down from last year, but international vendors who will be at the show.

In more NRF news, PredictiveRetailer has a recap of Day 1’s social media happenings. It’s a great review of blog posts and tweets referencing the day’s different sessions. Looking foward to seeing the recap for the rest of the sessions!

For those not attending the NRF Big Show, don’t forget you can use Twitter search to follow the NRF keyword to keep up to date with what’s going in in New York this week. There’s a bunch of attendees who are on Twitter and there’s been some good ideas and comments being posted there. I’ll be Tweeting from the Expo Hall tomorrow.

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Announcing: Retailer Twitter Aggregation

Tom — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 05:56:26 +0000

I was having a conversation with a colleague of mine who suggested that it would be interesting to see a list of all retailers’ Twitter accounts on one page. We agreed that it would be interesting to see how different retailers are using the same medium - are they promoting sales, offering ideas for their market, reaching out to customers?

A few hours of tinkering with RSS and PHP later and I’m presenting to you the No Turn On Red Retailer Twitter Aggregation. It is a one page view of the most recent Tweets from many retailers who are on Twitter. Right now, I am focusing on brick and mortar retailers with a national presence, but I will add more over time. For now, it was just a weekend coding experiment that I wanted to share with the world.

If you have suggestions for other brick and mortar retailers who are using Twitter, please let me know in the comments below. Thanks!

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Macy’s Closing 11 Stores

Tom — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 20:57:35 +0000

December wasn’t kind to Macy’s as they saw a 4.0% drop in same store sales and have now announced that they are closing 11 stores. Combining November and December, same store sales dropped 7.5% over last year for the retailer.

Close to 1,000 employees are affected by these store closings - unknown how many fo them will be able to transfer to positions in other stores.

From their press release, the closing stores are:

Ernst & Young Plaza (Citicorp Plaza), Los Angeles, CA (135,000 square feet; 136 employees; opened in 1986)
The Citadel, Colorado Springs, CO (195,000 square feet; 105 employees; opened in 1984)
Westminster Mall, Westminster, CO (156,000 square feet; 110 employees; opened in 1986)
Palm Beach Mall, West Palm Beach, FL (190,000 square feet; 71 employees; opened in 1979)
Mauna Lani Bay Hotel, Island of Hawaii, HI (3,000 square feet; 3 employees; opened in 1983)
Lafayette Square, Indianapolis, IN (160,000 square feet; 84 employees; opened in 1974)
Brookdale Center, Brooklyn Center, MN (195,000 square feet; 72 employees; opened in 1966)
Crestwood Mall, St. Louis, MO (166,000 square feet; 176 employees; opened in 1969)
Natrona Heights Plaza, Natrona Heights, PA (73,000 square feet; 124 employees; opened in 1956)
Century III Furniture and Clearance, West Mifflin, PA (83,000 square feet; 3 employees; opened in 2000)
Bellevue Center, Nashville, TN (211,000 square feet; 76 employees; opened in 1990).

These store closings represent a troubling sign of things to come for the retail industry. I believe Macy’s is just the first in a line of retailers to announce downsizing over the next few weeks. Who’s next?

More coverage from the Consumerist, Reuters and BloggingStocks.

Photo above from Flickr user pkeleher. Use under Creative Commons License.