MetaFilter posts tagged with retail

Who needs the Kwik-E-mart? Not me.

mullacc — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:46:14 -0800

Re-inhabited Circle Ks - an exhibit of identical storefronts abandoned by a national chain of convenience stores and re-purposed by new businesses. - The photographer's Google map of former Circle Ks. - Some commentary on the exhibit. - Previously: Not Fooling Anybody, a chronicle of bad conversions and storefronts past.

Dark Stores

mippy — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 04:58:02 -0800

The recession has seen the closure of many stores - from small local outfits to famous longstanding chains. Brian Ulrich's Dark Stores chronicles the ghostboxes of America, and the Guardian's Recession Monitor Flickr pool shows the view from the other side of the Atlantic. NB - apologies for the horrid interface on the Time article. Goddamn.

The Seven Types of Bookstore Customer

shothotbot — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:12:04 -0800

Hoping to work his way around to describing the graphic novel bookstore he wants to open some day, big box bookstore employee the Rocket Bomber has made strides in natural history by delineating the seven types of bookstore clients. Some snark in the comments has led to a followup post with additional how-to-run-a-bookstore musings.

Here today, gone tomorrow

MuffinMan — Wed, 06 May 2009 01:06:11 -0800

Pop up shops have been popping up, well, pretty much everywhere. And pop up restaurants. And pop up art galleries. While the trend started long before the current retail downturn, and looks set to continue as companies strive to create interest in their products and services, will creative spontaneity start to look a little bit too planned and evolve into a mainstream retail channel?

The final hours of Circuit City

Joe Beese — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 07:14:15 -0800

The final hours of Circuit City. (via)

Astro-turf from Walmart?

longsleeves — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 15:25:17 -0800

Ernest Kirschner, a 61-year-old business owner from East Haddam, is among thousands of Connecticut residents who may become the new voice of Walmart. When the Benton, Ark.-based retailer formed its own "support group," the New England Customer Action Network, Kirschner signed up eagerly. "I would stick up for Wal-Mart as strong as I can," said Kirschner, a frequent shopper. "I really think they've gotten an unfair shake." Wal-Mart Forms Customer 'Support Group' To Counter Opponents "Here's a giant retailer doing community organizing instead of selling cheap underwear and bananas," Norman said. "A lot of people signed up for this group, thinking they were going to get information about the next sale." Wal-Mart hired an outside company to do the recruiting, and those people were able to say they were not Wal-Mart employees. That, Norman said, led many customers to believe CAN was an independent group, not run by Wal-Mart itself.

Roberts Supremes reverses 100 years of antitrust law

dejah420 — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 12:13:33 -0800

There's been much talk about the Supreme's decisions on desegregation and free speech, but another ruling with broad consumer impact has gone relatively unnoticed. In a 5-4 decision [PDF], the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a 96-year-old ban on minimum pricing agreements between manufacturers and retailers. Dissenting opinion believes that this ruling will hurt consumers, raise prices and keep new retailers out of the marketplace. The 1911 ruling that was overturned was Dr. Miles Medical Co. vs. John D. Park & Sons which decided that it is always illegal for a supplier to dictate minimum prices to a retailer.

Akami Web Visualizations

srboisvert — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 15:20:58 -0800

Akamai's Internet Visualizations. Akamai is a major mirroring and caching service which serves up a large chunk of all internet traffic. They are now sharing some pretty visualizations based on their data which used to be customer only. News. Music. Retail. Real-time Web Monitor . Network Performance Comparison. Visualizing Akami.

107 'Add to Shopping Cart' Buttons

dbarefoot — Tue, 15 May 2007 11:22:28 -0800

Add to Cart, Buy, Buy Now, Add to Brown Bag? 107 clickable shopping cart buttons on one page. Most popular colour: red. I only recognize the Amazon button--clearly I need to hone my online shopping-fu.

Think of it as evolution in action.

ikkyu2 — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 05:43:45 -0800

Little Citadels. "Dine, shop, live, work, and be entertained in a unique and alluring environment," says the Time Warner Center website - all without ever stepping outside your gleaming Manhattan skyscraper. San Jose's Santana Row, which at first glance seemed no more than a Beverly Center you can live in, is now being compared favorably to urban European living. And MGM-Mirage's new, mysterious and costly ($7 billion!) Project CityCenter brings the trend to Las Vegas - with gambling, of course. They're not Arcosantis - and they don't, as yet, require an Oath of Fealty - but by all accounts they're thriving. What do they have in common? Wealthy tenants, megacorporate sponsors, and a shared desire to integrate efficient, conspicuous consumption into every aspect of civic life. Paolo Soleri may have been right after all - maybe he just forgot to account for the effects of capitalism.

Best Buy? OR Worst Buy? You decide!

ludwig_van — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 11:50:39 -0800

Best Buy to offer CDs by indie artists for $7.99. "Choose from 20 impress-your-friends selections" at below wholesale price. What does this mean to you and me? Responses from Carrot Top Distribution and Merge Records.

unite and take over

The Jesse Helms — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 07:54:16 -0800

If you shop at Urban Outfitters a $10/hour manager will accuse you of stealing. Or something.

Retailer 'Targets' New Market

theonetruebix — Sun, 28 Nov 2004 20:48:50 -0800

Target : Entertainment : Marijuana Presuming the URL will stop working at some point in the next few hours, here's a screenshot for posterity.

Game Over?

F Mackenzie — Wed, 11 Aug 2004 22:38:49 -0800

Game over for Toys "R" Us? A sale of their global toy business is being considered. FAO Schwarz and KB Toys have declared bankruptcy in the past year as discounters such as Wal-Mart have put the toy industry in turmoil. [full NY Times article; req.req]

I wasn't even supposed to be here today

drezdn — Tue, 27 Jul 2004 10:20:06 -0800

This job would be great if it weren't for the customers... Demon customers might not just annoy employees, but they may actually cost businesses money. Maybe a guide would be useful.

All I Can See Is A Parking Lot

benjh — Sat, 21 Feb 2004 14:52:31 -0800

Big Box Juggernauts are taking control of the landscape across North America. How does it impact how we live, and where we live? [Flash]

WalmartFilter

alms — Wed, 15 Oct 2003 14:31:41 -0800

WalmartFilter: "Wal-Mart controls a large and rapidly increasing share of the business done by most every major U.S. consumer-products company: 28% of Dial total sales, 24% of Del Monte Foods, 23% of Clorox, 23% of Revlon... Wal-Mart plans to open 1,000 more supercenters in the U.S. alone over the next five years.. giving it control over 35% of U.S. food sales and 25% of drugstore sales...The $12 billion worth of Chinese goods Wal-Mart bought in 2002 represented 10% of all U.S. imports from China." Setting aside questions of monopoly, isn't this a potentially dangerous monoculture?

Learn How to Make Change

johnnydark — Thu, 18 Sep 2003 09:10:48 -0800

Learn How to Make Change. Having never had to work retail and wanting to learn bartending, I found the FunBrain Change Maker to be a useful game where the player calculates the change given for a money purchase.

Yes, Conan... the Future...

jonson — Mon, 27 Jan 2003 15:06:33 -0800

The future of music retail... will be nothing like this. Echo Networks, a Los Angeles based "digital venture", in partnership with Best Buy, Tower, Wherehouse, Virgin & FYE, has launched an instore downloadable purchase initiative whose chances of failure are only exceeded by the extreme vagueness surrounding the announcement. For more, read the news article at CNET.

Happy Thanksgiving or Is It?

jonp72 — Tue, 26 Nov 2002 18:52:53 -0800

Happy Thanksgiving or Is It? In 1939, Franklin Delano Roosevelt responed to pressure from the National Retail Dry Goods Association to move the official date of Thanksgiving back one week to the next-to-last Thursday of the month. FDR hoped that this would enliven the economy by adding one week to the Christmas shopping season, but he received considerable political flak for tampering with what many viewed as a sacred religious holiday. (Thanksgiving is considered sacred even though it only became a national holiday due to lobbying by the editor of a 19th century woman's magazine.) New Deal-era Republicans were especially bothered by the calendar change and one essayist at the American Enterprise Institute still seems to carry a grudge. Congress later resolved the issue by passing a resolution in 1941 that designated Thanksgiving as the fourth Thursday of November.

owillis — Mon, 14 Oct 2002 17:00:48 -0800

A New Milestone for Video Games? "Three of the nation's top retailers, including Wal Mart, on Monday said they had refused to carry a new video game billed as the first major release to feature full-action nudity and with prostitutes and pimps as major characters." I enjoyed their "banned ads" myself.

jonmc — Tue, 16 Jul 2002 14:49:21 -0800

The Nametag Nation gets a voice online. Retail Workers along with our brethren in food service are the bulk of the nations clock-punchers now, and we've got a lot on our minds. Some sites, like the above linked, offer info on serious concerns. Other sites just let us vent. You may not agree with what we think, but we deserve to be heard from.

riley370 — Thu, 29 Nov 2001 18:57:46 -0800

Finding What You Are Looking For in a Music/Video Store
Sing to us if you want, but know that this method has a less than 50% success rate. Typically, we stand there and go, "Uhh... I dunno." And from my past experience, the people that work in music stores do not generally enjoy the majority of mainstream crap music.

whoshotwho — Fri, 16 Nov 2001 12:44:13 -0800

urban coffee opportunities according to this map, there are 38 starbucks within my area code alone. and right down the block, there are 2 out of 4 storefronts, of which this map only notes one: meaning there are more coffee opportunities available. this is the full link, since i think the first one got cut off.

idea from adbusters, but i did the work myself!

Bag Man — Sat, 27 Oct 2001 13:43:32 -0800

Is it RIP for the CD single? Slumping sales have reportedly prompted Target, the 4th largest music retailer in the United States, to stop selling CD singles at 200 of its stores.