Free Republic

18 retailers are having their Online Black Friday Sales today! Walmart's sale starts at 5:00am EST, while Staples starts at 6:00am EST and Amazon's starts at 3:00am EST, all other sales are either going on right now or will start very shortly

Retailers focus more on Thanksgiving Day By SAMANTHA BOMKAMP, AP Business Writer 31 minutes ago NEW YORK - The nation's retailers want shoppers to spend less time eating turkey and stuffing on Thanksgiving and more time shopping — whether it's online or on land. For the second year in a row, CompUSA Inc. and BJ's Wholesale Club Inc. are opening their doors on Thanksgiving. The exception are stores in Massachusetts where local laws preclude holiday hours. CompUSA also added an extra incentive for consumers this year by providing pumpkin pie for those in line. Iconic toy store FAO Schwarz —...

A disappointing October sales report Thursday sent a clear signal to retailers that they’ll have to pull out all the stops to get shoppers into their stores this holiday as declining home values, tighter credit terms and rising gas prices appear to have left consumers feeling spent. The nation’s biggest chain stores posted the second consecutive month of weak sales results, underscoring their concerns that sales growth this holiday season could be the slowest in five years. “Consumers are exerting a lot of caution,” said Mandy Putnam, vice president at TNS Retail Forward Inc., a Columbus, Ohio-based market research and...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP)-City leaders approved a ban on plastic grocery bags after weeks of lobbying on both sides from environmentalists and a supermarket trade group. If Mayor Gavin Newsom signs the ban as expected, San Francisco would be the first U.S. city to adopt such a rule.

WASHINGTON, March 22, 2007 – A garment factory in Najaf, Iraq, will start supplying clothes to U.S. and international retailers in a few months, a senior U.S. official said in Baghdad yesterday. The Najaf facility is “one of the most state-of-the-art clothing factories I’ve seen,” Paul A. Brinkley, deputy undersecretary of defense for business transformation, told reporters at a Baghdad news conference. “It will be providing garments to American and international retail beginning this summer.” The Najaf factory is but one of several economic success stories occurring across Iraq today, said Brinkley, who has been busy showing off the...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 8, 2007 – This Valentine’s season, Sears and Kmart customers will lend a hand, and a heart, to military families. The retailers have joined forces with Fisher House, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing “a home away from home” for injured military members and their families through the “Have a Heart for Military Families” program. Fisher House is a member of America Supports You, a Defense Department program that highlights and facilitates the ways Americans and the corporate sector are supporting the nation’s servicemembers. The Have a Heart for Military Families program will provide customers with an...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Jerry Biggs tracks gangs of professional shoplifters who can steal $20,000 worth of goods in a single day, but one of his biggest breaks came from the theft of a single tube of toothpaste. Biggs, who fights organized crime for drugstore chain Walgreen Co. (WAG.N: Quote, Profile, Research), said a trio of thieves had stolen at least $68,000 worth of goods from Walgreen stores around the country in 2005. The break came when an assistant store manager spotted a man stealing toothpaste and reported it to police, who stopped the man's car and found $10,000 worth of...

The cost of online content continues to climb, but Internet retailers are not paying the full price for producing it, sources are telling United Press International's Networking column. Rather, they are getting it wholesale, acquiring "syndicated" Web content, produced by product manufacturers, like Estee Lauder, Sony, Palm and others, and customizing and integrating it on to their own sites, with just one line of HTML code. The content includes not only product descriptions -- as in a catalog -- but also interactive demos, buying guides and educational content. By Gene Koprowski http://www.upi.com/Hi-Tech/view.php?StoryID=20060619-084736-7451r

The roots of radio-frequency identification technology stretch at least as far back as World War II, when transponders helped distinguish between Axis and Allied aircraft. Over the years the concept has been greatly miniaturized, landing RFID technology in such settings as animal tags, toll-collection devices, passports, keyless entry systems for cars and wireless credit cards. But perhaps none of these projects will have as much impact for consumers as the adoption of RFID in the supply chains of huge retail stores. Mega-retailers led by Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) have gotten their biggest suppliers to add RFID chips to pallets and...

The Labor Department reported that its Producer Price Index, which measures price pressures before they reach the consumer, rose 0.9 percent in December, the biggest increase since a 1.7 percent jump in September. For all of 2005, wholesale prices rose by 5.4 percent. That was the biggest increase since a 5.7 percent increase in 1990... However, core inflation, excluding energy and food, was up a more moderate 1.7 percent in 2005... Retail sales posted a weaker-than-expected 0.7 percent increase in December, the Commerce Department reported, after rising by 0.8 percent in November. "Retailers continue to report good sales momentum in...

Washington DC, Dec. 09, 2005 (CNA) - Intervening in the heated debate about the mention of Christmas on the public square, Concerned Women for America (CWA) presented a first Christmas list showing which businesses are honouring the Reason for the Season (the birth of Jesus), which ones are not, and which have mixed records. It first lists the corporation ‘Nice’ or friendly to the Original Christmas tradition.  This year Macy's joins the NICE list because it has returned the explicit mention of Christmas and Merry Christmas to its stores and its ads. L.L. Bean, on the other hand, just barely...

Investment research firm PiperJaffray today reported that its checks of Apple retail stores reveal that Apple is "highly stocked" heading into the holiday season, while third-party retailers are "struggling to replenish" supplies. Reiterating an "outperform" rating, the firm said that the distribution limitations may limit iPod sales and that Apple may not be able hit iPod shipment numbers estimated by some Wall Street analysts. Late last week, 8 of 10 Apple stores had all iPods in stock; however, only 2 of the 20 third-party retailers, however, had all varieties of iPod. Inventory for both the iPod and nano remains spotty...

While the immediate concern for the Gulf Coast and affected regions is the safety and health of those who were in the way of Hurricane Katrina, the livelihoods of comic retailers in the vast region which saw damage from the storm will be receiving support from both DC and presumably Marvel in the coming weeks. In a statement released today, DC said that they will do all they can to help affected retailers get back on their feet when they are able to return to business. From DC: With Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath impacting Louisiana, Mississippi and other Southern...

WASHINGTON -- It sounds hard to believe, but gasoline retailers' profit margins are at a 20-year low. Even more surprising, their troubles are being exacerbated by high pump prices. That has prompted motorists to avoid premium-grade gasoline and pay more often with credit cards -- both of which reduce earnings that already were just a few pennies per gallon. Coupled with rising competition from Wal-Mart, Costco and other discounters, these purchasing trends have reinforced the importance of an industrywide shift toward bigger facilities that sell more snacks, sodas and services that deliver higher profits. In a sign of just how...

By Gene J. Koprowski Published 12/15/2004 9:08 AM CHICAGO, Dec. 15 (UPI) -- Online shopping this holiday season might be most competitive among small, local retailers rather than big brands such as Target.com and Sears.com, experts told UPI's The Web. New technologies that give local online shops a big presence in search engines such as Google, Overture and others are driving the development. "Online shopping for the holidays is blowing the heck out of brick-and-mortar stores; it is the place to be," Marsha Collier, a Los Angeles e-commerce guru and author of "e-Bay Business for Dummies" (Fourth Edition, 2004, Wiley)...

Macys Nixing Merry Christmas? The store made internationally famous by the Christmas classic "Miracle on 34th Street" is reportedly phasing out any direct mention of the holiday in this year's seasonal promotions. "Instead of Merry Christmas the message appearing in ads and store displays is 'Season's Greetings' or 'Happy Holidays,'" reports WABC Radio newsman George Weber.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Sears, Roebuck & Co. and Kmart Holding Corp. on Wednesday said they would merge in an $11 billion deal to form the third-largest U.S. retailer. The companies said in a joint statement that the new company, Sears Holdings, will have about $55 billion in annual revenues, 2,350 full-line and off-mall stores, and 1,100 specialty retail stores.

Check out this hit peice from KDKA radio quoting Duquesne University marketing professor Dr. Audrey Gusky (who obviously is a bitter rat with her head where the sun don't shine) These were notes I was taking at 5am and 5:30am ET... Start of shopping season...stores and malls open early...retailers expect big season...Duquesne University marketing prof Dr. Audrey Gusky(sp?) thinks retailers are being overly optomistic...economy is shakey and consumers have been conservative in spending all year...expect a fair if not poor holiday shopping season...credit union national association backs up Gusky...teams with consumer federation of america for survey...finds 34% will spend less,...

Well, Halloween is over and the retailers in the United States have already started hawking the latest gizmos for Christmas. Ah, who am I kidding, they have been doing it since June but it seems to grate on me just a bit more now that we are preparing for Thanksgiving, the forgotten holiday. Suddenly, a holiday that encompasses everything that we should be doing, giving thanks for all of the good things we have in our lives and giving the narcissism that sometimes creeps into them a rest, stands overshadowed by the force-fed industrialism of our retail community. Never before...