Word: retail
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...momentum, Coke recently bought a 40% stake in Honest Tea, an organic-bottled-tea upstart. Pepsi, which owns Gatorade and Tropicana, was already well positioned, so it steadily ramped up its focus on snack foods. Its Frito-Lay division now accounts for 56% of Pepsi's annual retail sales. Over the past decade, that product diversity has helped Pepsi catch up to its rival. This year, though, rising commodity costs in the first three quarters have temporarily burdened Pepsi's diversification...
Another key problem for the retailer, which is based in Richmond, Va., and was founded by Samuel S. Wurtzel as a television store in 1949 (it now has about 700 outlets), was basic inventory management. "They had been unable to move their inventory," says Helen Bulwik of New Market Solutions, a retail consultancy in Oakland, Calif. That backlog left the company paralyzed, unable to buy fresh product or pay off its existing debts. Circuit City still owes $118 million to Hewlett-Packard, its largest vendor, plus $116 million to Samsung and $60 million Sony...
...retailers brace for penny-pinching shoppers this holiday season, they're hoping their websites can deliver some good news. At the very least, the Internet should outdo the sidewalk in delivering sales growth: holiday forecasts predict zero to 2.2% overall sales gains for November and December, according to respective estimates by Bain & Co. and the National Retail Federation (NRF), the world's largest retail trade association. By comparison, online retail sales are expected to grow 12%, to $44 billion, according to Forrester Research...
...force emerging in this year's holiday shopping spree is the increasing popularity of social shopping sites like Kaboodle, Etsy, ThisNext and Stylehive. Such online communities make buyers feel more comfortable opening their wallets. "People are reaching out for like-minded souls," says Wendy Liebman, CEO of WSL Strategic Retail, a New York-based retail consultancy. "Psychologically, it feels better if someone else is buying a product too." Kaboodle, the largest of the 25 or so social shopping sites in existence, lets community members discuss products, give one another shopping advice and receive feedback, like which item makes a better...
Even though most of the nation’s largest retailers reported a sharp slump in sales for October, local businesses seemed poised to weather the economic storm, buoyed by the reliable university customer base and the Square’s consistently strong foot traffic.“Harvard Square is a little different [from other business environments] in that people, students, academics, business people—they still have to come here because business continues and school continues,” said Denise A. Jillson, executive director of the Harvard Square Business Association. “People need...