San Antonio — The Progressive Retailers Organization was at the Westin La Cantera Hill Coun
If you remember our last issue, we covered the industry’s buying groups and their members, the independent retailers. In this one, we will shift our focus to the annual TWICE Top 100 CE Retailers Report, which covers calendar year 2012, and it is one of the most unusual Top 100 reports I can recall. As a group, business declined 0.3 percent in 2012.
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I read a blog online the other day about Best Buy’s turnaround in recent months, but halfway through, its author began to go down the road of gloom and doom.
I didn’t keep the link so pardon me if I don’t give the proper credit (or blame) to the author, but one line in the piece went something like this: “If Best Buy’s revival doesn’t succeed, consumer electronics will no longer have a national retail presence.”
I also recently heard this old line: “There are only three or four retailers suppliers really care about.”
Fireworks are usually a Fourth of July tradition but this year the days before and after Labor Day have featured plenty of “bombs bursting in air,” as the anthem goes.
Of course, there were planned new product introductions from IFA in Berlin last week packed with Windows 8 products, and from CEDIA Expo, which begins today in Indianapolis, Some of them were expected and others were surprises. (See CEDIA Expo coverage starting)
Fireworks are usually a Fourth of July tradition but this year the days before and after Labor Day have featured plenty of “bombs bursting in air,” as the anthem goes.
Of course, there were planned new product introductions from IFA in Berlin last week packed with Windows 8 products, and from CEDIA Expo, which begins today in Indianapolis, Some of them were expected and others were surprises. (See CEDIA Expo coverage starting.)
Diversity seems to be the theme in many industry developments in the past couple of weeks as illustrated in this issue of TWICE.
Retail is more diverse than ever, and suppliers are being more visible than ever on the store level. Samsung has new departments with Best Buy. Sony and Microsoft are experimenting with new concepts, while LG is denying speculation it might open up its own stores in the U.S. And who would have expected a RadioShack franchisee carrying GE Appliances?
Of course, no one in the consumer electronics industry ever agrees completely about everything, but the headline above seems to be the majority opinion from the retail execs, distributors, buying group leaders and others senior editor Alan Wolf quotes about 2013 retail conditions in our TWICE Special Report: The State of the Industry, beginning on p. 16.
Like President Obama’s State of the Union address in January, some of the comments are rife with talk of the housing market, job security, the end of the payroll tax cut and other general economic measures.
In our Special Report on Distributors one of the questions we asked executives was which product categories retailers should add.
The executives we interviewed provided us with plenty of suggestions in both CE and non-CE categories. But almost in unison the executives said retailers should consider smartphones and tablets.
There is usually a quiet news period in February in the electronics/appliance business as the industry returns from International CES, follows up on new leads generated there, and focuses on TV sales for the Super Bowl.
Well, that tradition that has come and gone, as the stories in this issue and on TWICE.com seem to prove.
The plethora of smartphone and tablet announcements from the Mobile World Congress in Spain was just one illustration. LG Electronics acquiring WebOS from HP for its smart TVs is another.
If you were wondering about the future of electronics/ appliance retailing, it is bright and fundamentals of the economy for 2013 are strong.
No, I didn’t visit some alternate universe. I just returned from BrandSource’s “Summit” in Orlando, which included its Home Entertainment Source (HES) meeting, where the independent retail channel was called the “healthiest” and “most stable” of all by Brand- Source CEO Bob Lawrence.
The final big-screen TV sales and profit numbers aren’t in yet, but indications are that retailers had a pretty good Super Bowl season.
But no matter how strong, a soft TV market is expected to continue this year with OLED and Ultra High-Definition TVs making a bigger impact by 2014, unless a surprise happens.
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