News

Purchases of appliances and consumer electronics helped goose otherwise sluggish comp-store sales for mass merchants last month, as higher interest rates and gasoline prices...

Reigning consumer electronics specialty retailers Circuit City and RadioShack posted solid same-store sales gains in April, while sales of CE products helped goose revenue...

Beyond buying, last month’s NATM Buying Corp. meeting in Aventura, Fla., represented a changing of the guard for the 17-member group. The annual conclave,...

Last season was clearly a watershed for e-commerce in general, and consumer electronics e-tailers in particular. But now that CE cyberstores have established a...

Buoyed by accelerated A/C sales during the steamy summer of ’99, and year-round gains in home laundry as product innovations spurred replacement purchases, the...

For consumer electronics retailers, 1998 was quite possibly the best of all times. With consumers flush with disposable income from a still expanding economy,...

Retail reaction to first Thomson’s, then Maytag’s, direct-to-consumer sales models is ranging from bemused indifference to surprise and outrage. Most merchants and buying groups...

In the latest round of Internet alignments, etown.com has formed a partnership with number-one CE retailer Best Buy. Under the multi-year agreement, etown, the...

CINCINNATI — While Wards has retrofitted nearly a third of its stores, arch rival Sears is still in the prototype stage of its own...

How are conventional electronics retailers responding to the new Internet interlopers? In a word, aggressively. Taking a page from the “best defense is a...

HUNTINGTON BEACH, CALIF. — BSH Home Appliances said it will not exhibit at the Kitchen and Bath Industry Show (K/BIS) in Orlando next April...

Taking stock of its enhanced buying clout, a newly enlarged Nationwide TV & Appliances laid out a five-year plan to members last week that...

Matching last year’s record fourth-quarter sales performance will be no mean feat, but retailers are confident that they’ll do just that during the first...

CEMA says that online sales of consumer electronics will reach $14 billion, or 13% of total industry volume, by 2002. The projection, based on...

CHICAGO — Let there be light. That, seemingly, was the marching order Montgomery Ward chairman Roger Goddu gave his store planners, designers and visual...

Savoring solid sales gains in most product sectors while girding itself for the new millennium, the NATM Buying Corporation turned out for a buoyant...

Associated Volume Buyers is embarking on a $20 million national advertising campaign that will position the buying groups’ 2,400 members as a single retail...

LAS VEGAS — The timing was uncanny. As word of Wal-Mart’s majap plans, a possible Frigidaire/ Maytag marriage, and Whirl-pool’s stock woes hit the...

NEW YORK — Last week was a busy one for RadioShack. Within the span of two days, the nation’s No. 4 CE retailer officially...

In cyberspace, no one can hear you scream. Otherwise, the din from e-tailers and retailers would have been deafening when Internet powerhouse Amazon.com added...

New York – Sony plans to begin selling a wide assortment of competitively priced CE products directly to consumers this week via SonyStyle.com, the...

A sizzling economy, aggressive store openings, and a rash of new and more affordable digital devices helped sales at the nation’s top 100 consumer...

Coming off a stellar sales year marked by double-digit sales gains, the Progressive Retailers Organization (PRO Group) said it expects volume to hit the...

If buyers at CES have more spring in their step, it’s small wonder: They’re just coming off what most are calling their best holiday...

They’ve yet to show a profit, while countless millions pour in from venture capitalists and consumers. They seem to have the goods, despite the...

NEW YORK — Best Buy blasted its way into the Big Apple last month with a multimillion-dollar marketing blitz befitting its largest untapped market....

The excitement was palpable at NATM Buying Corporation’s first annual meeting of the millennium, as members cheered the group’s newfound focus and new guiding...

The NECO Alliance held its biannual seasonal show last week. The two-pronged event was staged in Secaucus, N.J., for the group’s Appliance Dealers Co-op,...

Retail reaction to Sony’s new e-commerce initiative is ranging from unease to nonchalance. While some dealers are queasy about competing with a key supplier...

Kenwood has authorized Portland, Ore.-based e-tailer 800.com to carry its full home audio line, making the cyberstore the company’s first online-only dealer. The agreement,...

Visteon is joining Clarion as the second member of the AutoPC camp, which will offer an aftermarket “car computer” based on Microsoft’s Windows CE...

Microsoft announced at CES it will release later this half a next-generation Windows CE operating system for the Palm-size PC and will change the...

Component shortages, which have plagued the digital TV, handheld devices, and portable and home audio markets, have grown increasingly severe in car audio. Car...

As DVD-Video sales for the vehicle market rapidly escalate, more suppliers continue to enter the category, while existing players show innovations. DVD car leader...

Panasonic entered the Family Radio Service (FRS) category with three models at CES, while Audiovox bowed the first FRS unit to combine a GPS...

New York — The Digital Home exhibit held here on the eve of PC Expo played host to several advancements in home networking. Among...

The highly successful Palm handheld will face a new challenger, as Handspring releases today its first handhelds based on the Palm operating system to...

Jensen is debuting its first “competition”-grade car audio line, called ATS. In a concerted push to upgrade its brand image the company is offering...

Hoping to duplicate the company’s retail success in personal copiers, Xerox fired its first multifunction salvo with The Document WorkCenter 250, a five-in-one inkjet-based...

NEW YORK –Promising to do for handheld information/entertainment what it did for portable music, Sony launched its first Palm OS handheld here last night....

It was just a coincidence that both retired Casio (U.S.) president John McDonald and Casio (Japan) co-founder and chairman Toshio Kashio were each singled...

NEW YORK — Unit sales of optical media will rocket through the 10 billion mark worldwide in 2000, hitting 10.3 billion units, a hefty...