The big box locations that once served as Target stores in Canada now have a new tenant: Walmart. [More]
stores
Amazon’s Sales By Third-Party Sellers Hit 2 Billion Items, 40% Of Total
By 1.5.15
40% of the items sold on Amazon.com in 2014 weren’t sold by Amazon. Sure, Amazon collected fees, a percentage of payments, and storage fees for items stored in and shipped from Amazon warehouses. However, Amazon didn’t own the actual stuff, serving as a sales platform instead of a retailer for 2 billion items sold on the site. [More]
This ‘Premier Shopping Destination’ Is A Mall For Rich People
By 10.28.14
When people who are truly wealthy go shopping, they don’t always go to the regular malls that regular people use. No, people who drop six-figure sums at a single mall every year are entitled to a much fancier level of service, and there’s a Long Island mall that exists to provide it to them. Since the ’80s, Americana Manhasset has been a mall only for rich people. [More]
Report: Amazon Will Open A Real-Life Store In Manhattan
By 10.9.14
Back in the 1920s, catalog retail giant Sears opened massive spaces in major cities that served as combination retail stores and regional distribution centers for catalog goods. These centers closed in the ’80s and ’90s, but now online retail giant Amazon.com is following the same pattern in a tiny way, opening a combination retail store and pick-up center in New York City, across the street from the Empire State Building. [More]
Barnes & Noble Set To Close A Third Of Its Stores Over Next 10 Years
By 1.28.13
Despite the success of the company’s e-reader, the Nook, Barnes & Noble has been struggling to compete with the Internet with its brick-and-mortar stores for a while now, as have other retailers with physical locations. Another sign of perhaps eventual total doom? The CEO of B&N’s retail group says the company will be slowly shuttering about a third of its current physical stores over the next 10 years. [More]
Do You Have Questions For A Retail Store Manager?
By 8.31.12
Do you have questions about how the business of retail works from the other side of the register? Are you curious about store credit cards, loyalty cards, confusing signage, women’s clothing sizes, loss prevention, sales goals, the all-consuming power of Corporate, or other things that form the basis of most Consumerist complaints? The Consumerist’s Mystery Manager is here to answer your questions. [More]
Store Credit Cards Are An Even Worse Deal Than You Thought
By 11.3.10
Next time a checkout clerk offers you an “opportunity” to sign up for a store credit card so that you can get an instant 10% discount on that pack of gum or box of tissues you’re buying, remember this: the price you’ll pay for that deal is an interest rate as high as 25%. And, yeah, you’re telling yourself that’s no big deal, since you’ll pay it off every month. But will you? And are you prepared for the other gotchas tied up in a bright ribbon by your friendly retailer? [More]
Barnes & Noble Wants To Sell Itself, But Who's Gonna Buy It?
By 8.4.10
Barnes & Noble shares are soaring after it announced that it was up for sale and may even go private, or merge with Borders. [More]
"Weat Paent Man" Sign At Lowe's Makes Reading Fun Again
By 7.26.10
There is a free thinker at the Lowe’s in Fort Oglethorpe, GA, who has rejected the system’s stifling rules for spelling. Nice penmanship, though. (Thanks to Tim!) [More]
Dollar Tree Stops Playing Music In Store
By 7.7.10
Ultra-cheap discounter Dollar Tree has turned off the in-store music in all of its stores, citing cost issues. On the company’s Facebook page, shoppers keep complaining that the company is being too cheap (many don’t seem to know about licensing fees for music), but Dollar Tree’s official response is that it freed up expenses to keep prices low. [More]
Walmart Aims For Store In D.C.
By 7.6.10
Now that Walmart has finally triumphed over Chicago, it’s setting its sites on the remaining urban markets that have so far resisted the retailer. The Washington Post says an unnamed source has told them that Walmart is in final negotiations with a plot of land “on New York Avenue NE near the intersection of Bladensburg Road.” The area currently houses an auto parts shop and a strip club, among other businesses. [More]
Walmart Defeats Chicago, Plans To Open Up To 21 Stores
By 6.26.10
Like a big city pimp waiting to pick you up off the ground when times get tough, Walmart was able to establish its first stores in Chicago through guile, perseverance, and a few meaningless reassurances. Smaller stores! $0.50 pay raise! Union-built! These are the meager concessions that led Chicago to sell-out their local retailers. [More]
New Jersey Wants To End Mail In Rebates
By 5.10.10
Mail in rebates are a sneaky way to make things look cheaper than they actually are at the point of sale, since many consumers never actually get any cash back. Now New Jersey’s state Assembly is considering legislation that would require retailers to charge shoppers the after-rebate price on goods, instead of forcing them to mail in or submit online requests. If the retailer still wants to take advantage of the rebate, that’s no problem; he’ll just have to mail it in himself. [More]
Watch Out, The J.C. Penney Security Guard Has A Gun!
By 3.30.10
If security guards start carrying guns at department stores, I’m going to stop referring to them as rent-a-cops. Not because they’ve suddenly jumped up on my respect-o-meter, but because they might open fire. At a mall in Virginia last Sunday, a J.C. Penney security guard pursued a shoplifter into the mall parking lot and fired a gun into the air. The shoplifter was arrested, and the police confiscated the guard’s gun. The store won’t say whether it was owned by the guard or issued by management. [More]
The Story Behind The Man Who Designed Apple's Glass Cube Store
By 3.29.10
It’s not often that a retail store becomes an icon even before it opens for business, but Apple managed to pull off this weird architectural/cultural feat with its glass box Apple store in NYC in 2006–it’s the 5th most photographed landmark in the city and 28th worldwide according to a new study of Flickr images. The man who designed it, 70-year-old Peter Bohlin, has been awarded the 2010 gold medal from the American Institute of Architects for his entire body of work, and he doesn’t like computers and had never designed a retail environment before the Apple store. [More]
Target And Target.com Are Not The Same Company, So Just Deal With It
By 3.16.10
Reader Patricia is angry and somewhat baffled by Target’s insistence that Target and Target.com are not the same company and its not a Target store’s problem if the website is messed up and tells you to drive 25 miles to buy something that isn’t in stock. [More]
Ask The Consumerists: Would You Use A Credit Card With Your Photo On It?
By 3.11.10
Thinking about the controversy over asking for ID during credit card purchases, and the competing values of privacy and safety, Daniel had an interesting idea–though it isn’t a new idea. What if credit cards were photo IDs, and had our pictures on them? Logistical nightmare, or handy fraud-prevention tool? [More]
How Walmart Is Going Green
By 1.26.10
Ideally, companies choose to lessen their environmental impact because it makes financial sense, not because it makes them feel good–which is a good thing, since companies don’t have feelings. Today, FastCompany published a slideshow that looks at 12 ways the mega-retailer is trying out various green initiatives. Some of them are more about selling the concept of green to consumers, which is dumb, but the ones that deal with shipping, energy consumption, and market creation are pretty impressive. [More]
