Tag: Shopping and Retail

How Engagement Rings Explain What’s Happening in the Economy

Aftershocks from the coronavirus pandemic continue to rumble across the U.S. economy, and Signet Jewelers shared a surprising one this week: The company is selling fewer engagement rings this year because, it says, singles who were stuck at home during lockdowns failed to meet their would-be fiancés in 2020. “As we predicted, there were fewer […]

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New York City Has Lost Tens of Thousands of Retail Jobs, Report Finds

Why It Matters: The decline hurts job seekers without college degrees and worsens disparities. “New York is on the verge of a crisis, when it comes to jobs that are accessible to New Yorkers without a college degree,” Mr. Bowles said, and the decline is contributing to widening racial disparities. More than 70 percent of […]

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Can Old-World Horezu Pottery Survive Modern Tastes?

Sorin Giubega’s grandfather was a potter. So was his father. And at 8 years old, Mr. Giubega said, he started to play on a pottery wheel, too. Mr. Giubega, now 63, and his wife, Marieta Giubega, 48, are potters in Horezu, Romania, a town in the foothills of the Capatanii Mountains about three hours by […]

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Will a Dollar General Ruin a Rural Crossroads?

Anne Hartley’s brick house in Ebony, Va., overlooks windswept fields, a Methodist church, a general store and the intersection of two country roads, a pastoral setting that evokes an Edward Hopper painting or a faded postcard from the South. Now this scene is being threatened, Ms. Hartley said, by a plan to build what every […]

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A Veteran Business Journalist (and Wine Lover) Learns an Age-Old Lesson

Good morning. It’s Tuesday. We’ll look at a well-known New York store — and the troubles it has run into lately. Two words came to mind: caveat emptor. In English, buyer beware. I had been listening to one of the best and best-known business reporters in the country explain a story he had written. It […]

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From Jacksonville, Florida, Salt Life is Coming to a Beach Near You

In the coming years, Mr. Stillwell added, Delta Apparel plans to open as many as 20 new Salt Life stores across the country, in Georgia, Texas, California and other states. A Brand Grows in Florida The store in Long Branch, like Salt Life’s other stores (most of which are in Florida), is designed to evoke […]

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Some Canadian Indigenous See Hudson’s Bay Building as Hollow Gift

Near the old perfume counters on the ground floor of the Hudson’s Bay department store in Winnipeg, Canada, a trade dripping with symbolism took place. The 39th “governor” of Hudson’s Bay — North America’s oldest company and one of Canada’s most iconic — accepted from an Indigenous leader two beaver pelts and two elk hides […]

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Companies Are Pushing Back Harder on Union Efforts, Workers Say

Once the union wins a few elections, however, “you pull out all the stops,” Mr. Pryzbylski said. In some cases, the apparent escalation of company pushback has coincided with a slowing down of the union campaigns. At Starbucks, filings for union elections fell below 10 in August, from about 70 five months earlier, and no […]

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The Scramble to Take Over What Bed Bath & Beyond Left Behind

Engaged couples are struggling to navigate Bed Bath & Beyond’s faltering wedding registry system. Suppliers are scrambling to cultivate new business partnerships. Landlords are quickly closing deals on leases for suddenly vacated big-box locations. On TikTok, a shopper’s daily trips to a Manhattan store have found a receptive audience. After Bed Bath & Beyond’s recent […]

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Why Are All Those People Outside H&M, Again?

From the designer’s perspective, the upsides are clear: H&M offers intense exposure, including press coverage and a robust marketing budget. Prince and Nicki Minaj performed at a party celebrating Versace’s collaboration in 2011. Sofia Coppola directed a commercial for Marni’s collection in 2012, as did Baz Luhrmann for Erdem in 2017. It can also be […]

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The Companies Trying to Make Live Shopping a Thing in the U.S.

On a warm spring evening in New York, dozens of people gathered on a rooftop in Midtown Manhattan to sip fruity cocktails and chat. Shortly after the happy hour began, a woman stepped away from the crowd and went to work. Standing between a backdrop of fake greenery and an iPhone attached to a ring […]

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The U.K. Economy Needs a Pick-Me-Up. Is the Coronation Enough?

Dawn Anchor, who runs a pub in the village of Kings Worthy, about 60 miles southwest of London, has everything she needs: reams of red, white and blue bunting, mini Union Jack flags and a life-size cardboard cutout of King Charles III. This weekend’s coronation of Britain’s new monarch has been a gift for her […]

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In China, It’s Time to Splurge Again, and the Luxury Industry Is Relieved

This time last year, Shanghai — China’s capital of fashion and luxury — was in the throes of a ruthlessly enforced Covid lockdown. The city’s glittering high-end malls and avenues lined with flagship stores stood practically empty. Today it is a different story. Huge crowds on a recent weekend flocked to top retail destinations on […]

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San Francisco Whole Foods Closure Reflects City’s Economy and Crime Woes

SAN FRANCISCO — Last year, with pandemic lockdowns in the rearview mirror, Whole Foods Market made a bet on a gritty San Francisco neighborhood. The high-end supermarket chain opened a giant flagship store in a part of the city that is home to both tech companies like Twitter and open-air drug dealing. But the store […]

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Stew Leonard Sr. Dies at 93; Founded ‘Disneyland of Dairy Stores’

Stew Leonard Sr., a folkloric retailer who expanded his namesake stores into merchandising meccas replete with petting zoos and mechanical singing farm animals, died on Wednesday at a hospital in Manhattan. He was 93. The cause was complications of pneumonia, his son Stewart Jr. said. Mr. Leonard opened his original store in Norwalk, Conn., in […]

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Bed Bath & Beyond Shoppers Rush to Use All Those Coupons

For many shoppers, Bed Bath & Beyond’s bankruptcy filing on Sunday was a call to action. Customers — both loyal and lapsed — received an email from the home-goods retailer around 8 a.m. telling them that the company had decided to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Its 360 Bed Bath & Beyond stores would soon […]

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Bed Bath & Beyond Files for Bankruptcy

Bed Bath & Beyond came out of the 2008 downturn a winner. Competitors like Sharper Image and Linens ‘n Things filed for bankruptcy, but Bed Bath & Beyond actually expanded its business by acquiring other retailers. Its home-goods emporiums full of towels and kitchen aids — all available at a reduced price with that big […]

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Electric Vehicle Tax Credit Rules Create ‘Chaos for Consumers’

Designed to accelerate the shift to electric cars among other climate goals, the Inflation Reduction Act has in practice made buying such vehicles a lot more complicated. In August, the law ruled out the full tax credit of $7,500 for electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids assembled outside North America. That may make it harder for […]

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Dollar General Is Deemed a ‘Severe Violator’ by the Labor Dept.

For years, the Labor Department has operated a Severe Violator Enforcement Program, which targets companies with unsafe working conditions like manufacturers or construction firms with a high number of injuries or deaths. In September, the department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration unit widened the scope of the program to include any type of company that […]

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People Bought Crocs During the Pandemic. They Haven’t Stopped.

Like Peloton, Etsy and Zoom, Crocs saw its business boom during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. The company’s aesthetically questionable but easily slipped-on clogs were the perfect footwear for Americans puttering around their homes, gardens and kitchens during quarantine. But while many people got off their exercise bikes, cut back on D.I.Y. arts […]

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$20,000 Pants … and Other Adventures in Men’s Luxury Resale!

Arun Gupta, the co-founder and chief executive of Grailed — which last year was acquired by the GOAT Group, which also owns the sneaker reseller Flight Club — said that sales of luxury clothing had grown year over year, thanks to increased customer education. “The level of knowledge has gone crazy,” Mr. Gupta said. “The […]

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A Tangled Tale of Gun Parts, Identity Theft and the Ease of Buy Now, Pay Later

In late summer, a delivery service dropped off two packages containing $5,000 in gun parts and accessories at a house in Chino Hills, a community in Southern California. The packages, containing parts for a Glock handgun, an AR-15-style rifle and other weapons, had been shipped from Primary Arms, a gun seller in Houston. The components […]

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Retailers Lay Out a Downbeat Outlook as Inflation Squeezes Low-Income Shoppers

As many of America’s best-known retailers reported better-than-expected quarterly earnings this week, buoyed by shoppers who continued to spend through stubbornly high inflation, they all seemed to arrive at the same conclusion: Conditions are about to get much, much worse. Consumer spending, which accounts for about two-thirds of the U.S. economy, is a closely watched […]

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As Dollar Stores Proliferate, Some Communities Say No

”We often take over vacant space in neighborhoods and areas that are already challenged, keeping centers and other adjacent businesses open and serving communities, especially those that are underserved,” Dollar Tree said in a statement. When Lorraine Cochran-Johnson was first running for a seat as a county commissioner in DeKalb County, Ga., in 2018, dollar […]

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The Retail C.E.O. Pipeline Is Running Dry

One of the hardest-to-find items in retail right now is a chief executive. A number of high-profile companies — including Gap, Diesel, and the parent of the North Face and Vans — are operating without a permanent chief executive officer. And thanks to a contraction of management training throughout the industry and the need for […]

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