"Walmart reclaims Fortune 500 top spot" at Fortune.  "For fiscal year 2012, sales rose 5.9%, to $443.9 billion. Despite relatively strong sales, Wal-Mart must hold onto its U.S. shoppers, which make up 62% of the chain’s net sales."  See the list:  https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2013/snapshots/2255.html?iid=SF_F_River   "Target Announces Soft Opening of 24 Stores in Western Canada"  "Target is pleased to announce the soft opening dates for its first stores in Western Canada, including 22 locations opening on May 7 and two locations opening on May 14. The soft openings include stores in British Columbia, Alberta and Manitoba and follow the opening of [...]

  "Walmart Launches National Advertising Campaign to Show "The Real Walmart"  "Walmart today announced the launch of a national television and digital advertising campaign and accompanying website (www.therealwalmart.com). The campaign demonstrates how people across America count on Walmart to save money on the products they want and need, how the company provides tremendous career opportunities for its associates and how it creates efficiencies and works directly with manufacturers to help deliver low prices."  Read more:  https://media.prnewswire.com/en/jsp/latest.jsp?resourceid=6788014&access=EH   "Top 10 ideas from Retail over the last 12 months"  at Springwise.  "#3: In China, virtual reality stores turn open spaces into a [...]

  "Wal-Mart’s Prices Beat Dollar General in Most Categories" by James Callan at Bloomberg Businessweek.  "Wal-Mart prices were below Dollar General’s 100 percent of the time in household goods and more than 85 percent of the time in grocery, auto supplies, pharmacy and health and beauty aids, according to a study conducted by Bloomberg Industries during the past 22 months...Dollar stores “have a competitive advantage to Wal-Mart in that their locations are in residential areas,” said Poonam Goyal, a Bloomberg Industries senior analyst based in Skillman, New Jersey. “However, as Wal-Mart ramps up its neighbor market stores, that advantage will [...]

  "Retailers Wage War Against Long Lines" by Julie Jargon at WSJ.  "Supermarket giant Kroger Co. is winning the war against lengthy checkout lines with a powerful weapon: infrared cameras long used by the military and law-enforcement to track people.  These cameras, which detect body heat, sit at the entrances and above cash registers at most of Kroger's roughly 2,400 stores. Paired with in-house software that determines the number of lanes that need to be open, the technology has reduced the customer's average wait time to 26 seconds. That compares with an average of four minutes before Kroger began installing [...]

    "Walmart Announces Winning Team in 2013 Walmart Better Living Business Plan Challenge"  "The team from MIT started off the final round with a 15 minute presentation. Their idea, called Takachar, is to turn landfill waste into charcoal briquettes that local households in Mombasa, Kenya can use for cooking fuel. University of Michigan students followed with Covaron, an advanced material that can outperform high-grade engineering ceramics for a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the embedded energy.  After both presentations, the team from the University of Michigan was named the Grand Prize winner and received a check [...]

    "Shrinking Walmart stores will impact suppliers" by Kim Souza at The City Wire.  "As Wal-Mart Stores continues to focus on a smaller footprint for some of its stores, suppliers will see less shelf space and analysts say there is no time to waste in planning a survival strategy.  The Bentonville-based retail giant recently announced it would build 125 new supercenters this year at a cost of $2 billion. Total square footage on the new supercenter prototype is 140,000, shrinking from 169,000 in 2010. That’s 17% smaller than supercenters built four years ago."  Read more:  https://www.thecitywire.com/node/27581#.UX-h6bWG3X4   "Home Depot [...]

  "Home Depot’s failure in China: Ignoring women" by Ruchika Tulshyan at Atlanta Business Journal.  "“Research data indicates that Home Depot should adopt urban boutique concepts,” the study said. These stores should be placed in malls or on street corners, rather than operate as “big-box” retailers. The stores should emphasize female consumers.  “In many cultures, women are the primary purchasing agent. Especially in China, women make the final decision in buying home décor products,” said Gao. “After the one-child policy in China, women became so scarce that brides were given full control of how they wanted their house to look [...]

  "Walmart U.S. could learn from its sister chain Asda" by Andria Chang at Market Watch.  "Asda offers online groceries that she said could reach 98% of Britain’s population. It also has Asda direct non-food site; its George.com apparel delivers across Europe; and mobile commerce is 16% of its online sales.   Meanwhile, the chain allows customers to order online and pick up general merchandise within two hours in all stores and pick up groceries in more than 100 stores. It also offers free in-store Wifi.  “We believe that ASDA’s expertise with these technologies could be the secret sauce that gives [...]