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Thinking Beyond the Box
The Incredible Universe was…well, pretty incredible. There was no store like it ever before – and there’s not likely to be one like it ever again. For those of you who have gone through retail...
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JC Brigadoon
Run, do not walk, to the nearest JC Penney store and go see the new home store. It is perhaps the best merchandised, most beautifully displayed and freshest home furnishings department retailing has...
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The Home Run
Don’t look now, but Wall Street is actually loving home furnishings retailers…finally. Many of the stock prices of pure-play public retailing corporations that specialize in selling home furnishings...
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Opening the Door on Target’s new Threshold
Perhaps the Dayton family should have come up with another name for its discount department store start-up back in 1962 if it wasn’t prepared for the inevitable – and as-it-turns-out endless –...
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Hark the Herald Square Angel
Is there any store more associated with the holiday that Christmas has become in America than Macy’s? After all, how many retailing corporations are the stars of their own legendary motion picture that...
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Made Up in the USA
When Walmart announced last year it was going to launch a major push on domestically-made products—helping to fund some of the suppliers, in fact – it set off a jingoistic feeding frenzy. All of a...
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Serves Up, One Caffeine Wave at a Time
For big box retailers in the home business, there is no single merchandising classification they love to hate more than small electrics. A cornerstone of the housewares business, it is – along with...
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Housekeeping
The summer is usually not a time for great reflection: more often most of us spend as much time as possible getting away from the real world, via vacations, trashy novels and the latest super-duper...
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A Holiday Fable
‘Twas the day after Christmas, when all through the mall, Every shopping creature was stirring in a big free-for-all. The sale banners were hung in the windows with twine, In hopes that black ink would...
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Is IKEA the Most Influential Retailer of the Past 25 Years?
Let me cut to the chase. Yes. Because say what you want about Walmart SuperCenters, H&M, Uniqlo, Restoration Hardware or even Amazon, none of them— not one—would exist in their present form if Ikea...
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Homeless in America
The home furnishings business should be hitting…well, home runs right now. The only thing is that it’s not: a couple of bloop singles at best. Housing has rebounded and prices are approaching pre-Great...
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Pirch – The “Third Place” For Kitchen and Bath Lovers
Who would have thunk that hanging out in a kitchen and bath appliance store could replicate the Starbucks experience for coffee aficionados and Apple for computer lovers? Well, thunk again. Pirch, as...
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