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Best Buy will be fine. If you look at the moves they've made in the last few years, they've become super aggressive to responding to the threat of internet sales. They've gotten rid of rebates and they got rid of restocking fees. They've aggressively matched prices to amazon and online retailers. They've shrunk floor space of items declining in sales like movies and music and expanding big ticket items that don't commonly get purchased online like appliances and high end TVs. Even more importantly they've expanded heavily in the "store within a store" concept and have companies like Apple and Samsung buying floorspace in their stores at a premium. On the flip side, Amazon is no longer the sure fire bet for lowest price. Often times they just match whatever local big box has it for. For any big purchase I just check Best Buy or Target first and if they aren't cheaper they will happily match it anyways. Amazon is coasting on their reputation and if they didn't have so much money coming from AWS they would be in trouble.
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Dec 5, 2016 16:34
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Raylen posted:Not sure what thread this should go in but Amazon buying Whole Foods is kind of hilarious. They really want to get their cashier-free stores going with this acquisition. Amazon is 
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Jun 16, 2017 19:17
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Baronjutter posted:Haha holy poo poo Amazon I thought stores already did this is you used their in-store wifi (which is what this patent covers). Coinicentally, whenever I'm at my local Lowes and try to check pricing at Home Depot, the website frequently times out  Also, very clever of Amazon to patent this and then not allow anyone to license it so no one can implement the technology to block price checking.
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Jun 16, 2017 20:20
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I was in a Sears Grand store last weekend and there were a grand total of 30 cars in the parking lot mid-day Saturday.
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Jun 16, 2017 22:07
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Amazon Go is never going to see widespread adoption for a long, long time if ever.
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Jun 18, 2017 16:54
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My local Ikea put in self service checkouts and it went about as well as you can image people trying to self checkout with pieces of loving huge multi-box furniture and household goods where you cannot spell or pronounce the name. They ended up ripping them all out six months later.
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Jun 19, 2017 15:20
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Heliogabalos posted:citation needed, I want the exact loving statute that exactly words this in no uncertain terms Heliogabalos posted:I used to be a teacher. lmao
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Jun 19, 2017 23:28
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:Amazon just announced a new clothing feature called "Amazon Wardrobe." So if I send everything back and then just order another box I can have my own rent-a-swag scheme going? Imma bout to order 15 Trilbys and just swam em out.
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Jun 20, 2017 21:31
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I went into an Old Navy outlet store a few weeks back and holy poo poo the place was packed. People are still buying clothes but they're looking for deals, not fashion.
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Sep 6, 2017 22:01
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Toys R Us is probably going under. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/06/toys-r-us-weighs-possible-bankruptcy-filing.html quote:Toys R Us hires law firm as it explores possible bankruptcy filing Toys R Us hires law firm as it explores possible bankruptcy filing I worked for TRU right out of high school from 2000-2003. Near the end of my employment, Amazon was making their way into the market but Walmart has recently tripled the number of toy items they carried. This was also before Target doubled their toy section as well. When I got laid off in 2003, KB Toys folded and TRU had already begun closing a bunch of low-performing stores. Management had already openly expressed that Toys R Us was dead, but the company would be propped up by Babies R Us for as long as they could. That's when they expanded the BRU sections in TRU or made every store a TRU/BRU combination store. Looks like the BRU money finally ran out. I'm guessing if they don't completely go away that they'll restructure as only Babies R Us with a small toy section now. Baby poo poo is still wildly profitable.
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Sep 6, 2017 22:03
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Haifisch posted:Plus when they buy off Amazon they don't have to deal with their kid racing around and seeing 50 more things they want right now. Baby Registries have probably been keeping them alive for the last decade. The TRU division has been a walking corpse for 15 years now, it's all been about the baby stuff. Some of you may remember that Toys R Us's online strategy was to parter with Amazon. They signed a 10 year deal to be the only toy seller on Amazon. Amazon ended up loving them over and setting TRU's online strategy back a decade. quote:Prior to 2000, Toys R Us operated web sites at toysrus.com and babiesrus.com. By its own account, Toys R Us' online performance in 1999 was highly unsatisfactory. During 1999, Toys R Us did not have adequate inventory and fulfillment capabilities to meet the online demand for its products. http://www.internetlibrary.com/cases/lib_case424.cfm
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Sep 6, 2017 23:31
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just mentally add 10% to the price its not that hard gently caress
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Sep 9, 2017 22:30
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but do you brits wipe your rear end with sales-tax-included receipts whilst sitting or standing?
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Sep 11, 2017 03:38
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Today I went into a Kohls for the first time in years because they've now become a drop-off point for free Amazon returns. Weird to see a dying department store strengthen Amazon's power even more. However if you return anything to Amazon, they give you a free 25% off coupon to Kohls and we ended up buying some coats for Christmas gifts so I guess the system works?
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Dec 19, 2017 22:26
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OneEightHundred posted:Kind of weird that Toys R Us is doing bad even while Disney is revving the Star Wars/MCU merchandising machine into overdrive, but it sounds like Babies R Us has turned into a boat anchor, and the rest of the toy business is getting drained by video games, which Toys R Us was once the biggest retailer of, but has since lost most of their market share. Babies R Us has been the only thing keeping Toys R Us alive. I worked for TRU in 2000 when Walmart and Target announced they were going to drastically expand their toy sections at the same time they announced their ill-fated Amazon partnership. That was the beginning of the slow death of TRU.
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Dec 21, 2017 05:37
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I worked for Fry's Electronics for 8 years and that place is just straight up dead now. No one in the stores at all during their busiest times. I'm sure their online sales have boomed since they seem to have gotten their site working finally. I wonder why they haven't closed any stores yet? When I started working there they were opening 1-2 stores a year, the last store there opened was in 2004 and it's just been in steep decline ever since. I do know that they own their own land and buildings and the Fry's brothers are rich as gently caress, but idgi.
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Dec 21, 2017 22:42
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There's an entire subreddit dedicated to businesses that took over former Pizza Hut buildings. https://www.reddit.com/r/FormerPizzaHuts/ 
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Dec 22, 2017 03:26
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RandomPauI posted:Our Fry's was purpose built, if I remember right. Our theme is Oxnard, but the decor is more like "generic coffeeshop with a Fry's built around it". The Oxnard store is the only Fry’s built in a strip mall. All other stores are stand alone. It’s also the worst performing store in the company lol
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Dec 22, 2017 20:32
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TyroneGoldstein posted:Kohls is in that market segment that's doing ok, at least from their balance sheet. They made around a billion in profit last year, maybe a bit more. They're in that whole Nordstrom Rack/TJ Maxx/Marshalls/whatevs discounter segment that everyone loves. My wife and her friends all go crazy for those “60% off!” and Kohl’s cash games that I just do not like to play. I’ve checked her receipts and she’s actually getting stuff cheaper than anywhere else so I guess she’s playing the game right.
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Dec 23, 2017 18:01
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My old job used to have two Del Tacos across the street from each other. Man that was heaven.
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Dec 25, 2017 06:58
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https://twitter.com/cbsnews/status/946977423794589696
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Dec 30, 2017 20:22
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The “$10 large pizza” is the dollar menu of the fast food world. The cheap item to bring people in and hope they spend another $8 on breadsticks too.
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Dec 31, 2017 01:50
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RandomPauI posted:A few days old, but what southern Californian wouldn't like a one-stop shop for a fresh-from-frozen sandwhich, porn dvds, a cellphone case, cash register paper, an as-seen-on-tv ramen cooker, and a pci-e audio card? I think Frys finally removed their porn DVDs from the stores. My local one doesn’t have them anymore last time I went. I’d say a good 10-15% of lost prevention arrests were old grandpas trying to steal porn DVDs too.
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Jan 1, 2018 18:04
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Most of the Sears are closing in the next 3 weeks too, that's fast. http://searsholdings.com/docs/010418-store-closing-list.pdf
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Jan 5, 2018 03:52
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It's so weird. You just wanna grab Sears by the collar and shake them and say "What happened?!? You owned the goddamn world! You were the center of all retail and now you're slowly dying without changing a goddamn thing! Do something!"
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Jan 5, 2018 05:27
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You Are A Elf posted:I was in a Sears last Friday for shits and giggles and went directly to the tools section. It's practically non-existent now with only two aisles full of Craftsman hand tools that are overpriced junk (seriously, Kobalt and Husky tools at Lowe's and Home Depot are much better quality at a cheaper price, with lifetime guarantee, to boot), and one row of power tools, mainly mitre saws. A lot of the tools weren't even the common stuff you'd see like ratchets and sockets, but those gimmicky tools no one ever wants or uses and don't work. The rest of the old section (which used to be a quarter of the upper floor) was filled with Craftsman®©™-branded safety work shirts (those neon yellow and safety orange colors). The Sears I went in to a few weeks ago (which is one of the ones closing) had half their tool section dedicated to riding lawnmowers in an area of the country where lots don't exceed 10,000 sq. ft. What are you doing Sears?
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Jan 5, 2018 19:39
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I worked for Toys R Us when they opened their enourmous Times Square location in 2001. It closed down two years ago.
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Jan 5, 2018 22:53
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turn all sears into stores that exclusively sell prepper supplies Edit: are there prepper stores besides army surplus?
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Jan 9, 2018 17:59
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Haifisch posted:There's one here that's right next door to one, although they have separate parking areas. It's not closing(yet?), though. JnnyThndrs posted:The one in Sacramento that’s closing is a few hundred yards from the back of a Wal-Mart as well. Pretty sure that's be design. Most of the new Walmarts going up in my area have a Sams Club also being built in the same shopping center. Makes logistics a hell of a lot easier and I'd wager all the Sams Club shoppers are regular Walmart shoppers as well. They're complimentary, not competitive.
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Jan 12, 2018 02:22
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I haven't read a book in years but I read a shitload of online short and long form articles every day 
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Jan 12, 2018 02:24
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The_Franz posted:Yep, that's what happened to the one in my hometown. Sam's opened in the early 90s and basically had a monopoly on the wholesale market in the area. As the years wore on that store started to feel more and more dilapidated though, and when a BJ's opened not too far away around Y2K it was like a breath of fresh air: some of the merchandise seemed to be of better quality, the store felt less depressing, etc... Evidently they lost a lot of business to BJ's and when you combined that with the strip mall in which they were located being in the early stages of becoming a dead mall they ended up closing in 2005 or thereabouts. I got a basically free Sams Club membership off Groupon and bought a set of trash cans there, the kind that open with your foot. The mechanism broke on one of them within 3 months and i took them back, aksing if I could swap one, or if they were out, to return the set and buy a new matching set. They refused and told me to contact the manufacturer and the manufacturer wanted me to ship a $40 trashcan back to Thailand so i threw them both in the trash and bought a new set from Costco the next week.
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Jan 12, 2018 23:01
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OneEightHundred posted:The one wrinkle in the Costco doing everything so much better theory is that BJ's isn't really anything special and they're still outcompeting Sam's Club in their territory for whatever reason. Costco is a great company. BJs is an average company Sams Club/Walmart is a terrible company.
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Jan 13, 2018 05:43
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KingFisher posted:So paying 1/3rd more than average retail wages, stock, benefits, employee education programs. your company can’t seem to stop killing people by working them to death in their warehouses you corporate stooge i did retail for 9 years of my life and would never ever step foot into an amazon warehouse
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Jan 17, 2018 17:09
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JustJeff88 posted:True, but it's quite easy to engineer something for which patches, updates and technical support will be discontinued when it's still perfectly functional in order to make people buy The Next Big Thing™, if only out of frustration. Much more than two years, but Microsoft is doing everything short of holding a dagger to my throat to get me to upgrade to Windows 10 when I'm still very happy with 7. I don't expect them to support Win7 forever, but I'd rather that they not choke me until I Windows 7 is nearly a decade old and will still be supported for 2 more years and they gave away Windows 10 for free. What more do you want man?
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Jan 24, 2018 05:22
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Toys R Us closing another 180 stores in the US http://www.businessinsider.com/r-toys-r-us-says-to-shut-about-180-us-stores-2018-1
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Jan 24, 2018 05:22
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BarbarianElephant posted:I predict the stores will be hard to maintain, and people will be often shoplifting by accident due to broken cameras and wifi issues. They were talking about it on a podcast with one of the guys who checked it out. They use cameras to see the shelves and items, not weights or sensors, so as soon as you take an item off the shelf and walk away an employee has to come over and "reset" the shelf again with the products up front so the next customer can be charged properly. It's a hilariously inefficient system.
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Jan 27, 2018 07:28
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Mozi posted:I've never heard anything like that before in all the articles about those stores, so a source would be nice. It was the guy who did the Ars article. He kept mentioning that there’s not really any shelf sensors, but it’s just a grid of hundreds of cameras that track everything you pick up and put down in the store. He did see some sensors in the back of the refrigerated shelves but suspects its additional cameras. Shelf sensors seem like it would be difficult to determine who picked up an item where a camera system could track a single product no matter where it went. Cameras make more sense than weight sensors when you think of something like 1% or 2% milk. If I pick up a 1% and realize that I needed 2% but put it back in the wrong spot, I get charged for the wrong thing and inventory is screwed. Cameras with unique packaging fixes that. I may have misremembered the need for shelf resetting though. Here’s him talking at around 29 minutes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dPlWMSr1pk FCKGW fucked around with this message at 06:29 on Jan 29, 2018 |
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Jan 29, 2018 06:23
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Bloomberg made an American Mall Simulator that you can't win https://www.bloomberg.com/features/american-mall-game/
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Feb 8, 2018 00:57
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Panfilo posted:Costco has a really generous return policy too but I don't see them getting rid of it anytime soon. You might argue that requiring a membership there helps cut down on dishonesty but they waive the fee if you use their card and spend a fees worth of money in a year (so a hundred bucks or whatever, not hard to accomplish). Costco already modified their electronics return policy due to rampant abuse. Also to get the fee waved you’d need to spend $5000/yr exclusively at Costco which is actually a lot.
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Feb 13, 2018 18:53
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I hate Costco gas because everyone around here min/maxes their gas purchase to the point where they’re time is valueless as long as they find the absolute lowest price and as a consequence the Costco gas lines are always a minimum 20 minute wait no matter what time you go.
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Feb 13, 2018 21:09
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