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Thanks to Thom Filicia and the Queer Eye guys, everyone wants a home makeover these days. So much so that K Mart extended Martha Stewart's contract until 2009--assuring that her coveted $12.99 bath towels will be available at the discount retailer for many years to come. Other mass-market retailers are ramping up their home-decor products too. Target just added Rachel Ashwell's Simply Shabby Chic collection of bedding, bath accessories, curtains, table linens and throw pillows to its lineup of designer goods, which include home products by Michael Graves and Isaac Mizrahi. LaZBoy has enlisted...
...years the supermarket industry viewed its 1% net profit margin as a badge of its efficiency. In reality, the opposite was true: the grocers earned so little because they weren't that good at managing the supply chain. Wal-Mart exploited that weakness with devastating effect on the grocers, and it has forced food suppliers to become more efficient too. For starters, the leviathan has changed the way grocery stores deal with their vendors, as everyone seeks to copy its Retail Link system, which provides real-time sales data to manufacturers. Wal-Mart also helped persuade the pack to subscribe...
...perhaps Wal-Mart's greatest industry legacy will be helping supermarkets wean themselves from a slew of so-called vendor allowances, which suppliers pay to cover everything from how an item is promoted to how much shelf space it gets to how much of it is sold. These allowances have little to do with consumers and add complexity to operations. Yet the industry has relied on them for profits--instead of, say, finding and selling the stuff that shoppers really want. Grocery manufacturers, who have leaned on the allowance system to help launch new products and unload unpopular ones, were...
...Meijer, the Michigan retailer that invented the supercenter way back in 1962, the top brass would no doubt argue against such a strategy. Sales plummeted at the company when Wal-Mart started moving into its strongholds a few years ago. "They sold everything we sold and ran promotions that we could not match," says Jim Jensen, 46, who was managing a 209,000-sq.-ft. Meijer in Howell, Mich., when a Wal-Mart moved in across the street in 2000. Jensen responded with six-hour price specials, supersales and coupons galore, and when those initiatives failed to pull the store...
...with a relatively modest print campaign, the sparklers became an instant hit. Halle Berry, Cameron Diaz and Sarah Jessica Parker all wore them, while Katie Couric sported hers when she featured them on the Today show. As experts buzzed about women's disposable income and girl-power advertising, Wal-Mart hastily introduced a selection starting at $177, with solid sales results...