Bill Emerson

It makes about as much sense as Walmart getting into the search business.

Not to belabor the obvious, but Apple and Amazon are two different brands.

Apple stores extend a tightly integrated group of products and capabilities into an environment that reinforces the brand (Think Different).

At Amazon, the products themselves are almost secondary. The brand's strengths are access to what increasingly seems like...

Facebook offers large retailers the opportunity to do something that most stopped doing decades ago; namely, establish direct communications between actual customers and senior managers. They can actually listen, understand what their customers are looking for, like, don't like, etc. Further, they have the opportunity to turn a bad...

Retailers have learned many lessons over the last ten years. They are the same lessons that the generation before them learned, or, more succinctly, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

What are these lessons?
1. Pay attention to what the customer is asking for...

Why doesn't the fact that this came from San Francisco surprise me?

Yes indeed, we should have Katherine Sibelius decide if it's "one lump or two." After all, how in the world can all us unenlightened morons make decisions for ourselves?

The big question, of course, is, with all us...

All brands, including a storied brand like Lauren, face a huge and, for most, insurmountable hurdle. Their very success inexorably identifies them with a particular generation, in this case the boomers. As one generation leaves the acquisitive cycle, the next searches for brands which are "theirs" and consciously choose...

This will be the exception. On a very specific situation (fewer stores, high density, low competition), this might make sense. This is not, however, a viable strategy for major expansion. There simply aren't enough of these kinds of situations around. Secondly, this introduces the complexity of managing inventories in...

This is the first of what will probably be many changes in store staffing at WMT. Store level payroll is the biggest controllable expense for a 4-waller. With flat sales and increasing cost pressures, expect store payroll to drop.

Sam would not be happy about this. This was a...

The Romans had bread and a circus where gladiators fought and died while the audience gorged and drank. Fast forward to the present and we have the Super Bowl where gladiators fight and get rich (and admittedly beaten up pretty badly). As it's said, the more things change....

As...

This is one of those discussions where everyone is correct. Some malls are doing well and showing growth. These are typically what has always been referred to as the "A" malls. It also doesn't hurt to have an Apple store, which is so productive that it raises the sales...