"The Home Depot to hold more than 700 hurricane workshops in stores from Texas to Maine"  "Hurricane Preparedness Workshops are free and will be held on Saturday, July 27 from 10 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. local time. Participating stores and registration information is located at workshops.homedepot.com, where customers can find information on all other Home Depot workshops year-round."  Read more:  https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-home-depot-to-hold-more-than-700-hurricane-workshops-in-stores-from-texas-to-maine-209481321.html   "Costco Wholesale CEO Discusses F3Q 2013 Results - Earnings Call Transcript" at Seeking Alpha.  Read at:  https://seekingalpha.com/article/1471251-costco-wholesale-ceo-discusses-f3q-2013-results-earnings-call-transcript?source=email_rt_article_title   "Target beauty consultant service to debut at 36 Twin Cities-area stores" by Martin Moylan at MN Public Radio.  "Target [...]

  "Low Prices Help Costco's Quarterly Profit Rise " at CNBC.  "Costco Wholesale reported third-quarter profit just above analysts' estimates, as its low prices for food and gasoline appealed to shoppers...Total sales at stores open at least a year, or same-store sales, rose 5 percent."  Read more:  https://www.cnbc.com/id/100770469   "Costco Wholesale Corporation Reports Third Quarter and Year-to-Date Operating Results for Fiscal Year 2013 (Co. Press Release)"   "Net sales for the quarter increased eight percent, to $23.55 billion, from $21.85 billion last year. Net sales for the first thirty-six weeks increased eight percent, to $71.10 billion, from $65.54 billion last year." [...]

  "Walmart.com hires a VP of marketing" by Thad Reuter at Internet Retailer.  "Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has hired Brian Monahan as vice president of marketing for Walmart.com. He starts his job today and reports to Joel Anderson, president and CEO of Walmart.com U.S.Walmart.com is No. 4 in the new Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide."  Read more:  https://ht.ly/2xehAI   "Bi-Lo acquiring Harveys, Sweetbay, Reid’s chains" by Christopher Seward at Atlanta Journal Constitution.  "Bi-Lo Holdings is acquiring the stores from Delhaize Group, a Belgium-based company. As part of the deal, Bi-Lo will acquire 72 Harveys stores and 72 Sweetbay locations, in addition [...]

  "Wal-Mart Plasters Stores With Green Dots to Stay Stocked" by Renee Dudley at Businessweek.  "In April, Acosta Inc., a Jacksonville, Florida-based consulting firm, began the green-dot program in Wal-Mart’s U.S. stores after previously conducting shelf audits without telling workers what items would be monitored."  Read more:  https://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-05-24/wal-mart-plasters-stores-with-green-dots-to-stay-stocked-retail   "Say ‘I Do’ in Target’s Budget Bridal Line" by Kate Rogers at Fox Business News.  "The discount retailer announced this week a new line of wedding dresses that are all priced at $130 or less. And with the average bride spending $1,211 on their dress, according to The Knot.com.  Brides can [...]

  "The Rise of Virtual Brick-and-Mortars" by Jeffrey Rayport at HBR.  "UK-based retailer, Tesco, has launched an array of "virtual" stores designed to sell products with no merchandise. The world's first virtual store was a Tesco Homeplus opened in the Seoul Subway in August 2011. This wasn't really a store: it was a wall that displayed over 500 of the chain's most popular products, each with an associated barcode that users could scan to populate a shopping basket that Homeplus would deliver to their homes the same day. Since launch, the Homeplus Smartphone App has become the number one shopping [...]

  "Wall Street pours cold water on Target's weather excuses" by Thomas Lee at Star-Tribune.  "“Weather does not even make up [a quarter] of their sales decline,” said Robin Lewis, CEO of the Robin Report, a retail strategy newsletter.  The Minneapolis-based retailer said sales at stores open for at least a year dropped 0.6 percent while overall sales were nearly flat at $16.6 billion. Specifically, Target executives said cold weather that persisted into spring especially hurt seasonal goods like clothing, lawn, patio, and sporting goods."  Read more:  https://www.startribune.com/business/208585721.html   "Target Reports First Quarter 2013 Earnings" - Company Press Release.  "In [...]

  "Lowe's Earnings Miss as Cool Weather Damps Sales" at CNBC.  " "Cooler-than-normal temperatures and greater precipitation resulted in a delayed spring selling season, which impacted our results in exterior categories," Robert A. Niblock, Lowe's chairman, president, and CEO, said in a statement. "While overall performance in the month of March was particularly soft, April improved significantly and we have maintained that positive momentum through the first few weeks of May."  Read more:  https://www.cnbc.com/id/100750905   "Lowe’s Reports First Quarter Sales and Earnings Results (Lowe's Press Release)"  "Sales for the quarter decreased 0.5 percent to $13.1 billion from $13.2 billion in [...]

  "Home Depot Announces Q1 Results; U.S. Comp Sales +4.8%" at MSN Money.  "The Home Depot®, the world's largest home improvement retailer, today reported sales of $19.1 billion for the first quarter of fiscal 2013, a 7.4 percent increase from the first quarter of fiscal 2012...The Home Depot will conduct a conference call today at 9 a.m. ET to discuss information included in this news release and related matters. The conference call will be available in its entirety through a webcast and replay at earnings.homedepot.com."  Read more:  https://money.msn.com/business-news/article.aspx?feed=PR&date=20130521&id=16502228   "RadioShack Looks to Regain Relevance With Push for Younger Consumers" by [...]