news
hhgregg Adds Vizio TVs, Displays And Soundbars
Updated!hhgregg has added Vizio to its A/V assortment. The multiregional CE, appliance and home-furnishings chain has begun carrying Vizio’s competitively priced TVs, 4K Ultra...
Retail
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Forget Rice: Staples Teams With TekDry To Save Soaked Smartphones
Staples is expanding its partnership with TekDry, a water-damage recovery service for mobile phones, from 82 to 600 stores. The $70 service employs a...
news
Black Friday 2016 Watch: Macy’s To Open Even Earlier This Thanksgiving
Despite more than 40 retailers stating they will be closed on Thanksgiving, Macy’s is taking a different tack and will open even earlier than...
news
Holiday 2016: NRF Foresees A Holly, Jolly Christmas For Retailers
The National Retail Federation (NRF) is anticipating one of the best holiday selling seasons in a decade. The trade association is projecting retail sales...
news
hhgregg, Nationwide Marketing Re-up With Synchrony
Consumer financial services firm Synchrony Financial has signed separate, multi-year contract extensions with hhgregg and the Nationwide Marketing Group. For multiregional appliance, CE and...
news
Amazon Launches ‘Unlimited’ Music Streaming Service
Amazon has supplemented its Prime Music streaming service with a new program that offers “tens of millions of songs” for $10/month, upping the competitive...
news
Sears Fires First Promotional Volley Of Holiday 2016
Sears is getting an early start on the holiday selling season — and looking to take consumers out of the market — with a...
news
Black Friday Watch: hhgregg Joins Thanksgiving Day Boycott
Updated! hhgregg is the latest electronics/appliance retailer to join the Thanksgiving Day backlash. The chain, which last year launched its in-store Black Friday sales...
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Walmart Slowing Store Openings To Focus On Growing E-Commerce With Jet
Walmart will slow store openings in order to focus more heavily on online sales, the company revealed during its annual investors meeting last week....
news
Sales Associates Matter, They Really Matter
Even in the era of online sales — or perhaps because of it — sales associates continue to hold tremendous sway over shoppers, a...
news
Retailing Briefs
BrandSource Debuts Video Content Service BrandSource, the $14 billion buying group, is rolling out AVB/TV, a new streaming video service first announced at its...
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Feds Fine Best Buy For Selling Recalled Products
Best Buy has agreed to pay a $3.8 million civil penalty for distributing and selling 16 CE and appliance models that it allegedly knew...
news
Phone Surgeons Is Now Seeing Patients At BrandsMart USA
Phone Surgeons, the nationwide network of mobile device technicians, has hung up its shingle at BrandsMart USA. The three-year-old business, founded by CEO Chris...
news
Best Buy Ignites Its Start-Up Selling
Teams with PCH to accelerate products onto sales floors Best Buy is lighting a fire under the pipeline bringing start-up tech to consumers’ homes....
news
Tech Is Tops With Consumers For Holiday 2016
Tech is top of mind with consumers when it comes to holiday promotions. According to a new report by shopping advice site BestBlackFriday.com, 40...
news
Storis Lifts Its Retail Data Service To The Cloud
Storis, a provider of retail software solutions and services, is now offering its Data Warehouse platform in the Cloud. The program, introduced in 2002,...
news
CEO Eddie Lampert Looks To Ease Sears Fears
Sears Holdings chairman/CEO and majority shareholder Eddie Lampert took to the bully pulpit that is his corporate website yesterday to assure the financial and...
news
Black Friday 2016: BJ’s Throws In On Thanksgiving Closings
BJ’s has confirmed what TWICE previously reported: that the No. 3 wholesale club will be closed on Thanksgiving Day. What we didn’t note is...
news
Black Friday 2016 Watch: Staples Will Be Closed On Thanksgiving
Staples is sticking to its guns and will keep Thanksgiving Day sacrosanct like it did last year. “We encourage our customers and employees to...
Keeping Current
Fitch Gives Sears Two More Years At Best
The Fitch ratings service said Sears faces a “significant default risk” within the next 12 to 24 months that will likely result in a...
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Black Friday 2016: Déjà Vu All Over Again?
If this year’s Black Friday doorbusters seem more than a little familiar come November, chances are they are. According to Rebecca Lehmann, content marketing...
news
Amazon Expected To Grab Over 25% Of Holiday 2016 Online Sales
It’s shaping up to be an e-commerce Christmas and we can all thank Amazon for that. According to market research firm eMarketer, online sales...
news
Sony Square, A Bleeding-Edge CE Showroom, Opens In New York
A year after getting out of the retail business, Sony has opened its first Sony Square showroom in the U.S., with a somewhat different...
news
Amazon Planning Plenty More Pop-Up Stores: Report
During Amazon’s formative years its executives would often tout the cost advantages of cyber storefronts over physical locations. In due time though, the company...
news
Black Friday Watch: These Retailers Will Be Closed On Thanksgiving
Every Thanksgiving Day there’s a hue and cry across the nation, and it’s not just over football or the last piece of pumpkin pie....
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Holiday 2016 Outlook Shines Bright For Retailers: Deloitte
There’s some good news for retailers regarding this holiday season as an uptick in sales is expected. “We anticipate a modest increase in sales...
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Black Friday 2016 Sales Volume Shifting Online As Retailers Adjust Doorbusters: Report
More shoppers will let their fingers do the walking this Black Friday. According to projections by shopping advice site BestBlackFriday.com, online sales are expected...
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Control4 Names Top Dealers At CEDIA
Smart-home solutions provider Control4 has bestowed its 2016 Dealer Awards to a short-list of industry retailers. The dealers, honored last week at Control4’s CEDIA...
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Black Friday 2016 Watch: Stores Will Open Even Earlier On Thanksgiving This Year
BFads, a longtime bastion of leaked Black Friday promotions, is out with its Top Ten predictions for the day after Thanksgiving, and the list...
news
More Kmart Closures A’Coming
Sears Holdings is about to pull the plug on 64 more Kmart stores, according to published reports, or about 8 percent of its remaining...
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hhgregg Extends Store Closings To Chicagoland
hhgregg’s Wisconsin store closures are extending into Illinois. The chain, which is shutting all five Badger State stores, will also close a location in...
news
Let The Black Friday 2016 Predictions Begin
Last week TWICE pre-previewed the coming Black Friday selling season with a selection of out-on-a-limb pricing predictions. Now Deal News, a sales aggregation and...
news
Black Friday 2016 Preview: TVs Could Be The Week’s Biggest Casualties
Updated! With Labor Day now a fond memory, all eyes are looking ahead to November when the nation’s biggest — and for many, most important...
news
Staples App Makes Back-To-School Shopping A Snap
A new mobile service from Staples is helping parents collect their kids’ required school supplies simply by snapping a photo of the checklist. Under...
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Sony, Best Buy Adding Hi-Res Music Stations To 250 More Stores
Eight months after placing high-res music kiosks in 82 stores, Sony Electronics and Best Buy are rolling out a second wave of the live...
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U.S. Cellular Rolling Out Samsung Shops
Regional carrier U.S. Cellular has opened the first of 57 planned in-store Samsung shops, making it the first domestic wireless provider to feature the...
news
Happy Birthday Best Buy
Half a century ago this Monday, a CE salesman named Dick Schulze and his wife Sandy opened a local audio shop after remortgaging their...
news
Starpower Powering Up New DFW Showroom
Starpower, the TWICE award-winning A/V, major appliance and home-furnishings chain, is planning a new showroom in the Southlake section of greater Dallas-Fort Worth. The...
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Sennheiser Prepping Oculus Showroom & Holiday Pop-Up Store
Sennheiser is readying two new retail experiences in New York for the fall. The first — known as the Soundscape and housed inside the...
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Target Blames Apple For Comp-Sales Decline
Target chairman/CEO Brian Cornell took Apple to task during a second-quarter earnings call today, blaming an innovation lull at the tech giant for much...
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CVS Launches Mobile Payment System
CVS has launched its own mobile payment system, known fittingly as CVS Pay. The system, which is integrated with the retailer’s iOS and Android...
news
Sony’s Z-Series TVs Off To Strong Start
Predictions by Video & Audio Center (VAC) of a “grand slam” for Sony Electronics’ new flagship Z-series 4K Ultra HD TVs appear to be...