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Hello and goodbye from Des Moines, where everything on the New West Side is shiny and bright.Every office park, retail center and neighborhood is alit with a bright swath of LED lights.Which is beautiful but makes me nostalgic for what seemed a much simpler Christmas time of my youth. These watercolors of old Grand Rapids downtown encompass most of my Christmas shopping haunts of old - before the suburban malls displaced downtowns (only to shut down themselves several decades hence) and Macy’s bought the few surviving regional department stores. Bigger but definitely not better by most measures.Herpolshiemer’s, Wurzberg’s and Steketees’s...

The last Sears department store located in the retailer’s home state of Illinois is getting ready to close its doors for good. The shop, located in Simon Property Group’s Woodfield Mall, is scheduled to shutter on Nov. 14, the company confirmed to CNBC. A spokesman for the department store chain’s parent company, Transformco, said it will look for ways to revive the space with another tenant because it also manages the real estate. “This is part of the company’s strategy to unlock the value of the real estate and pursue the highest and best use for the benefit of the...

Why Cosmetics Rule the 1st Floor of Department Stores Invariably, in Korea as much as the rest of the world, cosmetics shops dominate the ground floor of department stores. The reason is simple: customers who purchased cosmetics items on the first floor account for more than 70 percent of retailers' total sales. Hyundai Department Store analyzed the sales contribution of customers who paid with department store credit cards during the first 11 months of last year, to find out how much the annual spending of customers who bought specific items contributed to total sales. It showed that cosmetics purchasers make...

PARIS — French police neutralized five sticks of explosives discovered in the restrooms of a prestigious department store in Paris on Tuesday following a warning from a group demanding the withdrawal of French troops from Afghanistan. Agence France-Presse said it received a letter from a group calling itself the Afghan Revolutionary Front saying that "several bombs" had been planted in the Printemps store. AFP reported that the letter called for the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Afghanistan by February next year. The bombs were supposed to go off on Wednesday, the group said.

PARIS, Dec. 16 -- Police found five sticks of dynamite in a landmark Paris department store Tuesday after an unknown group warned that bombs were hidden there and threatened more attacks unless France withdraws its military forces from Afghanistan.

PARIS, France (CNN) -- Police evacuated a major department store in central Paris Tuesday after finding five sticks of dynamite inside, French police told CNN. CNN affiliate BFM-TV reported the dynamite was not rigged to explode, but police did not immediately confirm the report. French news agency AFP said it received a letter in the mail Tuesday morning, claiming to be from an Afghan revolutionary group and saying that a bomb was at the renowned Printemps department store. The news agency alerted the police, who evacuated the store, AFP told CNN. The bomb squad found the suspicious package around 11...

HIDDEN MESSAGES: Store muzak not just designed to lull shoppers, it's also a signal By YU MIYAJI, The Asahi Shimbun ``Help! I need somebody! Help! Not just anybody!'' Strains of the familiar Beatles music waft out over the loudspeakers of the Shimonoseki Daimaru department store in Yamaguchi Prefecture on a recent July afternoon. In response, store officials rush to the summer gift section to aid the swamped sales staff. Although played at the store as an instrumental-only song, the lyrics of the Beatles' hit are particularly appropriate given the situation at hand: ``Won't you please, please, help me?'' It's the...

BELLEVUE - When Ella Gunderson wanted some new clothes she thought for sure she'd find something in the junior's department of Nordstrom. But she was surprised by what she found. "Some of the clothes there just aren't very appropriate," she explained. She found short skirts and blue jeans that left her belly button bare. So, Ella took her complaint to the top. She wrote the company a letter. The letter read: "Dear Nordstrom, I'm an 11-year-old girl who has tried shopping at your store for clothes, in particular jeans. But all of them ride way under my hips and the...