Steve Montgomery

Great idea to share space with a complementary retailer, but I would suggest that you carefully consider how it's done. Do you want to carve out a section of your existing space or do you simply want to be next door?

Sharing floor space, back rooms, utilities, etc. is far...

Adding the separate department for Windows is a good move—especially if the store associates actually receive meaningful, good training and are able to use their improved skills to help customers make better decisions. I wonder what they will be trained to say when someone asks if should they buy...

Fresh & Easy had three fundamental issues—its products, pricing and locations. Wild Oats may be able to address the first two, but not the third.

This is a good move for Cumberland. It helps them attract and retain employees because so many other retailers in the c-store and other industries are going the opposite way and cutting hours so that they will not have to provide health care benefits.

The c-store industry's employee turnover is...

I doubt that higher net worth individuals were Walmart's target customers when entering Canada. However, they found themselves in a market where retail options were fewer than here in the U.S., and shopping at their locations didn't carry the "stigma" that some have put on shopping at Walmart.

Whole Foods's policy of having default language for "consistent communication, inclusion, and especially for safety and emergency situations" makes sense as does it policy that "English-speaking workers must speak English to customers and other employees while on the clock, unless the customer speaks another language." The issue may not...

There is a big difference between self-checkout which I like when buying just a few items in a supermarket or home supply store and a fully automated store. With self-checkout I get to pick up the item, look at it, ask someone about it (assuming there is someone there...

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice or in this case years later, shame on me. REI's policy might have been a selling point, but based on the stores quoted in the articles, it would appear some people were taking unfair advantage of the previous policy. I...

Long gone is the ironic image of the French cafe with customers sitting drinking a cup of coffee and smoking a cigarette—inside or out.

As others have indicated, it will be interesting to see how Starbucks and its customers handle those customers who knowingly or not, violate the new 25...

There is the implication is that a SME would have more active participation by its ownership in the day-to-day operations, including interacting with their customers. Assuming that's true, then the employees have the opportunity to learn directly from the owner what constitutes good customer service.

I, like Ian, hate to...