Posts about Department stores
Anti-Black Friday midnight movement gains strength
Posted by: Thomas Lee Updated: November 18, 2011 - 11:55 AM
I'm sure Target Corp. knew a few people were not likely to be happy about its decision to open on midnight Black Friday.
But I doubt the company expected this much blow back. A online petition started by a Target employee in Omaha, Nebraska to protest the move has now collected 175,000 signatures. And Change.org said Seth Coleman, a local Target employee, will deliver those signatures to CEO Gregg Steinhafel at Target's corporate headquarters on Monday.
"We haven’t heard from change.org that they plan to deliver a petition," Target spokeswoman Molly Snyder said in an e-mail. "We respect our team members’ right to express their opinions."
The petition won't change a thing. Target's great Black Friday machine is already in motion and nothing short of an alien invasion can stop it. But the petition will attract a lot of attention and continue to make Target look like the Ebenezer Scrooge of Thanksgiving.
My problem isn't necessarily the midnight openings. We knew this was going to happen sooner or later. When you open stores at 6 a.m. one year and then 4 a..m. one year, logic dictates midnight would be just around the corner.
No, my main beef is how retailers publicly justify their decisions.
"People want to shop through the night," a Macy's executive was recently quoted.
"Our customers told us they would rather stay up late to shop than get up early, so we're going to hold special events on Thanksgiving and Black Friday," Wal-Mart chief merchandising officer for U.S. stores Duncan Mac Naughton said in a statement.
“We know our customers like to get an early start on their Black Friday shopping, so we’re offering more savings than ever and providing even more hours to save by opening our stores at 9pm on Thanksgiving night,” Greg Ahearn, Chief Marketing Officer, Toys“R”Us, U.S, said in a statement.
That's right folks. Retailers are doing this for YOU. You spoke, they listened. Opening at midnight or earlier was not a calculated move to capture a bigger slice of an ever shrinking sales pie. Retailers had no choice but to give customers what they want.
Call me cynical but I have a hard time believing customers were flooding the phone lines of retailers, asking, no DEMANDING, they open at midnight.
What annoys me about this spin is that retailers are abdicating any skin in the game. Instead, they're passing responsibility (or is it blame?) to the shopper.
In a way, they're right. Target would not open at midnight unless they knew people would show up. But let's not confuse the order of things. Retailers do something, customers respond. If customers like, retailers will keep doing it or do more of it.
If customers really drove things, then retailers should dispense with door busters and simply give away laptops, iPads, and flat screens at no charge. Heck, throw in a free ride home as well.
Not all retailers are following the pack. Sears, the country's largest department store chain, will stick to its 4 a.m. opening though its Kmart chain will retain its 6 a.m. Thanksgiving Day opening.
And at least Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn was more straightforward about the retailer's decision.
“We recently had to make a difficult decision,” Dunn recently told a conference. “We were going to be open at a much more civilized hour. At Best Buy we need to be where our customers are. The market has moved to a midnight hour.”
“I feel terrible because it will change some Thanksgiving plans for our employees,” said Dunn, who will also be at the stores.
Dunn's contrition is both refreshing and, unfortunately, besides the point. He may feel bad but the hoards of retailers rushing to midnight and earlier clearly overruled his empathy.
Forget Black Friday. Veteran's Day is where the action is.
Posted by: Thomas Lee Updated: November 10, 2011 - 1:48 PMI opened my Star Tribune this morning and look what I found inside:
For a second, I thought I might have accidently received the Sunday paper. From the look of it, retailers are not waiting until Black Friday to beg you to buy stuff.
I counted ten(!) circulars, everyone from JCPenney, Herberger's, and Kohl's to HOM, Sears, and Gander Mountain. At this rate, whole rainforests will be wiped out before 2012.
Wal-Mart goes Black Thursday
Posted by: Thomas Lee Updated: November 10, 2011 - 11:45 AMWhen Target, the Mall of America, and Best Buy said they will open at midnight on Black Friday, I was a bit dumbstruck.
"Where else is there left to go on Black Friday?" I told a colleague. "You can't really go any earlier than 12 a.m."
Unless you start Thursday.
Acting on cue, Wal-Mart Stores said Thursday it will open its toys, home, and apparel departments at 10 p.m. on Thanksgiving, thereby upping the ante on retail crazy.
"Our customers told us they would rather stay up late to shop than get up early, so we're going to hold special events on Thanksgiving and Black Friday," Wal-Mart chief merchandising officer for U.S. stores Duncan Mac Naughton said in a statement.
There's actually some logic, perverse though it may be, in Mac Naughton's reasoning. As the unlucky retail reporter who has to cover Black Friday, I suppose it would be much easier to stay up to 10 p.m. on Thursday night than drag my butt out of bed before sunrise on Friday morning.
Come to think of it, maybe Congress should pass a law officially moving Black Friday to the Friday before Thanksgiving.
Or better yet, just move Thanksgiving back a week.
I'm sure the pilgrims won't mind.
America's favorite fashion retailer is ... Kohl's? Really?
Posted by: Thomas Lee Updated: November 9, 2011 - 8:25 AMAs a general rule, I take surveys, especially consumer surveys, with a grain of salt for this simple reason: there is always a difference between what someone says and what they actually do.
Take the University of Michigan consumer confidence index, which has proven to be a poor indicator of future economic activity. Consumers might feel lousy about the economy but that won't stop us from buying stuff we don't need.
Which brings us to an odd survey recently conducted by Market Force Intelligence, a "leading global customer intelligence solutions company for multi-location businesses." (Don't worry. I don't know what that means either.)
Market Force surveyed 7,000 customers in North America to ascertain "America's Favorite Fashion Retailer." Here are the results:
1. Kohl's
2. Nordstrom
3. Macy's
4. Dillard's
5. JCPenney
6. Coldwater Creek
7. Ann Taylor LOFT
8. T.J. Maxx
9. Old Navy
10. Marshalls
What's noticeable about this list is who's not on it, namely Target Corp, which finished 15th, one spot ahead of Wal-Mart.
That's right folks, the retailer that sold out its exclusive Missoni collection in less than 24 hours somehow ranks below those fashion powers known as Old Navy, JCPenney, and Marshalls.
Reasonable people can disagree about Target's fashion sensibilities. But Old Navy? Really?
Market Force says the 7,000 survey respondants ranged in age from 18 to more than 65 and reflected a broad spectrum of income levels, with three-quarters reporting incomes of more than $50,000 a year; 81 percent are women and half said they have children at home.
What does the survey doesn't tell us is the exact age break down and the geographic distribution of the respondents, ie. cities, suburbs, rural areas. We also really don't know what factors consumers weighed when deciding on their "favorite" fashion retailer, though the press release vaguely mentions price and type of merchandise.
One thing is for certain: consumer sentiment doesn't necessary translate into financial results.Kohl's and JC Penney have been struggling for most of the year. As for Old Navy, same-store sales in October dropped 9 percent, a lot worse than the 4.3 percent decline Wall Street was expecting.
If Target took the survey at face value (which I doubt), then the retailer should be fairly discouraged. You would too if you devoted considerable resources to fashion only to be bested by stores better known for clearance sales than fashion sense.
What can Michael Francis do with $12 million? Apparently not hire his own financial counselor
Posted by: Thomas Lee Updated: October 4, 2011 - 6:33 PMIf you're going to recruit Target Corp.'s executive vice president/chief marketing officer as your next president, you better pony up some serious cash.
Which, of course, is what J.C. Penney Co. Inc. did. The retailer will pay Michael Francis an annual base salary of $1.2 million, one million shares of restricted stock, and a tidy $12 million signing bonus, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
That's a significant raise from the $870,000 annual salary Francis earned at Target though Francis ultimately took home $4.6 million last year, including $1.9 million from exercise of stock options.
But look a little closer and you will J.C. Penney threw in a few other perks, most notably "up to $14,630 as a first-year fee and up to $10,125 annually for each succeeding year to cover the financial counseling firm's fees."
(The retailer also offered Francis up to $3,000 for an annual health exam. $3,000? That must be one hell of a health exam. Mine consisted of a 15 minute check-up at HealthPartners by a doctor with an indiscernible accent.)
Now call me old fashioned but I think it's reasonable to assume that a guy who will pocket a $12 million signing bonus can afford his own financial counseling. But then again, logic has never really applied to executive compensation.
Some executive compensation experts have argued such perks allow executives to focus on their jobs without worrying about their personal finances.
I'm not buying it. I'm sure Francis can walk and chew gum at the same time. And if he can't....well, that's a different story.
NFL teams might offer financial counseling to its players. There are plenty of stories of athletes who squander their money.
But Francis is a businessman, a highly touted, experienced executive at the top of his game. It seems odd that J.C. Penney would subsidize the financial counseling of a man chosen in large part to safeguard shareholder value.
Ex-Nordstrom manager at Mall of America trades winter boots for raincoat
Posted by: Thomas Lee Updated: September 20, 2011 - 3:40 PMLike most retailers, Nordstrom doesn't release sales figures for specific stores. But I'm guessing that the Nordstrom store in the Mall of America has performed well for the Seattle-based retailer.
Why? Because Todd Buntin no longer lives in Minnesota.
Buntin recently left his job managing the MOA store to oversee the Nordstrom store in downtown Seattle. I'm assuming Buntin must have done something right if Nordstrom entrusted him with the responsibility of running the company's flagship store. At 373,000 square feet, the downtown Seattle location is also the retailer's largest store and includes a restaurant, spa, and wedding suite.
Nordstrom's flagship store in downtown Seattle
Mall of America officials say Nordstrom, along with the other high end shops along the mall's South Avenue, are among the big reasons why sales at the mall are up 10 percent year to date and on pace for a seven percent gain for the year.
Overall, Nordstrom has had a solid year, which indicates higher income shoppers are still spending despite a dismal economy. In August and July, the retailer posted same-store sales gains of well over six percent.
Year-to-date, Nordstom said same-store sales have jumped 6.9 percent, including 7.9 percent for the regular Nordstrom stores and 3.1 percent for the discounted Nordstrom Rack.
Numbers like these are why people like Todd Buntin get promoted.
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