Retail sales fall 0.8% in January from December as shoppers pause after strong holiday season at Yahoo/AP. “Excluding sales at auto dealerships and gas stations, sales were down 0.5%. The decline was bigger than the 0.10% drop that economists expected and marked the lowest monthly figure since March of last year.” Read more

 

Target’s latest answer to inflation angst: A new brand with prices starting at $1 at Minneapolis Star Tribune. “Dealworthy will replace Smartly, a smaller private-label, low-cost brand Target started in 2018 …Target is also revamping one of its larger and more popular owned brands, Up&up. It has been around for 15 years and already generates nearly $3 billion in sales a year. “We did a lot of research, listening to guests and reading reviews,” said (Rick) Gomez. “And we’ve identified the opportunity to improve over 40% of the line.” Read more

 

Canadian Tire Q4 comp sales down 6.8% Press release

 

Walmart, supermarket data prove it: Valentine’s Day is for the procrastinators at Fortune. “Walmart — which sells nearly 40 million red roses for the holiday — says around 75% of its Valentine’s Day sales occur on Feb. 13 and 14. Those two days account for 80% of Kroger’s sales during Valentine’s week.” Read more

 

Shoe Carnival acquires Rogan Shoes, a footwear company with 28 store locations in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Illinois Press release

 

Alibaba faces reckoning with once-vaunted ‘new retail’ strategy at TechCrunch. “Alibaba is now taking a strategic shift back to its core focus of online businesses, i.e. ecommerce and cloud computing. This move is essential — and urgent — in light of the meteoric rise of its archrival PDD.” Read more

 

Warehousing Demand Is Starting to Shrink at WSJ. “Some businesses now are subleasing space they had added “based on projections that didn’t come to fruition,” said Mark Russo, head of industrial research at Savills. “It was a lot of just-in-case inventory management thinking and thinking that that level of consumption was going to keep going up.” WSJ subs

 

US Foods Q4 net sales grew 4.5% Press release

 

Walmart and Target Are Championing a California Ballot Measure That Could Crack Down on Retail Crime at Inc. “Target has contributed $500,000 to the efforts to repeal Prop 47, and Walmart has given twice that, according to the Orange County Register. The money goes toward campaigns to qualify the measure for the ballot in November.” Read more

 

Instacart lays off 250 employees, or 7% of its workforce, to ‘reshape’ company at TechCrunch

 

Walmart in talks to buy Vizio for more than $2 bln at WSJ/Reuters. “… a move that could bolster its advertising business and give it control of more than a fifth of the U.S. television market.” Read more

 

California grandfather fatally shot while trying to apologize for fender bender at Walmart at Fox News

 

WaWa Billionaires Bet on Taking the Convenience Chain South at Bloomberg. “The Wawa convenience store chain, opened by Grahame Wood in 1964 to sell milk from the family dairy, has built a fiercely loyal customer base by capturing a certain je ne sais quoi about the personality of Philly and South Jersey. With about 1,000 locations and estimated sales of $18.5 billion in 2023, the Wood family’s 53% stake gives them a net worth of $6 billion…” Bloomberg subs.

 

True Religion, the Y2K-era jeans brand that managed to survive two bankruptcies, is exploring a sale at CNBC

 

***Advertising inquiries, new product searches, comments, questions, etc., contact Jason Long at jlong@eyeonretail.net