Managing Director and Retail Analyst at GlobalData Retail
Aloha Friday 🤙🏼 Here are some interesting stories from the world of retail for Friday, March 1: 🖥️ More layoffs are coming to Best Buy after two years of declining sales that continued into holidays. Executives see the consumer electronics market beginning to stabilize, but not by enough to avoid pain. 👖 Levi’s wants consumers to rethink their denim shopping. Under a new chief executive, the brand known for jeans is aiming to be a full outfitter, working primarily through its own stores and e-commerce. 🛁 Bath & Body Works stock fell 6% on Thursday after the soap and perfume retailer said it expects earnings to fall in fiscal 2024, overshadowing better-than-expected fourth-quarter numbers. 📦 The Container Store has laid off about 100 employees, roughly 2.5% of its total workforce. The layoffs are the result of close scrutiny of the retailer’s cost structure amid declining sales that have continued into its fourth quarter. 📺 Qurate Retail Group’s fourth-quarter revenue fell 11% to $3.14 billion from $3.5 billion a year ago, the company. Revenue at the company’s main banners, QVC and HSN, fell 4% for the quarter. 🎈Party City is introducing a new store format that highlights two of its key categories: balloons and birthdays. Based on success in pilot stores, the party supplies retailer said it plans to introduce the new format in several locations. 💊 Ohio has fined CVS Health $1.25m for multiple violations at 22 outlets across the state, ranging from dirty, understaffed stores to missing pills and a customer sent to the emergency room after ingesting the wrong medication. 💰 Americans are socking away less of their paychecks each month so they have more cash to spend. The strategy has supported their purchases, and the economy, in recent months, but it’s bound to run out of steam this year. 🏋♀️ Oprah Winfrey is leaving the board of WeightWatchers, ending a nearly decade-long stint as a director of the beleaguered company that has faced sudden competition from Ozempic. 🎌 Seven & i Holdings Co. has opened a new, larger 7-Eleven store in Chiba prefecture, Japan, to test consumer appetite for a bigger version of its outlets. The store is almost double the size of regular 7-Elevens. 🏡 Whirlpool, a name often associated with home-appliance bruisers like washing machines and refrigerators, is looking to cut costs and focus on selling blenders and coffee makers, its latest effort to overhaul its business. 🇺🇦 Zara is set to reopen its stores in Ukraine, which were closed after Russia's invasion of the country. Parent company Inditex plans to gradually reopen 50 of its 80-plus stores in Ukraine, starting in early April. 🍺 The world’s largest brewer, AB InBev, may have lost as much as $1.4 billion in sales because of the backlash to its brief partnership with a transgender influencer to promote Bud Light beer. #retail #retailnews #economy
