Retail News

Walmart, Amazon, Starbucks, Uniqlo: A Look Back At One Of The Biggest Weeks In Retail News

The retail industry’s ears must be ringing.News in the sector blew up this past week, and the stories that unfolded over the last few days point to larger trends reshaping the industry. Here’s a recap of the week in retail news.

Walmart Ramps Up Made In America Push

Walmart is beefing up efforts to increase apparel and textile production in the U.S. as part of its Made In America push. It plans to connect manufactures and suppliers of apparel, textiles and home goods with components part makers, setting up, in effect, a trade fair, at its second Manufacturing Summit in Denver come August, the retailer told Women’s Wear Daily this week.

The takeaway: While Amazon has no doubt stolen some of Walmart’s bellwether-of-the-retail-industry thunder, the chain is still the world’s largest store, and an industry pacesetter.

By now, it’s become pretty clear that Wal-Mart’s plan to buy $250 billion in U.S.-manufactured products over the next 10 years, which was first announced in January 2013 at the National Retail Federation’s Big Show, is not a passing fad, but an ongoing mission to rework how the nation sources its goods, which has been defined for decades by a made-overseas model.  That push is poised to force other retailers to intensify their efforts to ramp up manufacturing stateside.

Amazon’s New Fire Phone Bows

Amazon launched its Fire phone, which includes a 4.7-inch screen, unlimited photo storage capacity, and an app called Firefly that can identify products in the real world. “The Firefly button lets you identify printed web and email addresses, phone numbers, QR and bar codes, artwork, and over 100 million items, including songs, movies, TV shows, and products,” said Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, reported my colleague Laura Heller, who attended the event that launched the Fire.

The takeaway: It’s no secret that as shoppers are increasingly tethered to their mobile devices, retailers are scrambling to unlock the sales potential of mobile commerce, which is expected to generate an estimated $57.8 billion in retail sales in 2014, up 37.2% from 2013, according to market research firm eMarketer. And when the nation’s biggest online merchant takes its boldest step into mobile commerce to date, attention must be paid.With the Firefly app, “shoppers in any store, any where, at any time can instantly compare prices and buy an item they find for less on Amazon,” Heller says. What’s more, those who purchase the phone get a free year of Amazon’s Prime shipping and content service.With this phone, Amazon, the ultimate retail disruptor that has siphoned market share from long established chains ranging from Wal-Mart to Best Buy BBY -2.11%, is now making it that much easier to shop from “the everything store.”The Fire phone “clearly demonstrates their high priority on bridging the physical and digital worlds to capture a strong hold on the shopping and transactions battleground,” said Matt Schmitt, president, chief strategy and innovation officer of Reflect, in the post, “Amazon’s Fire Phone is all about selling stuff on Amazon.com AMZN -0.91%,” on Retailwire. “This is an area of relative weakness for Apple AAPL -1.03% and Google.”

Starbucks To Fund Employees’ College Education

Howard Schultz, Starbucks CEO, unveiled a plan this week that he said is close to his heart. For employees of the coffee chain who work at least 20 hours a week, the new Starbucks College Achievement plan will offer free tuition for juniors and seniors to complete a bachelor’s degree via Arizona State University, and at least 50% tuition reimbursement for freshmen and sophomores.

The takeaway: With this move, Starbucks is taking its conscious-capitalism ethos to new heights, raising the bar for other merchants.

Consumers are increasingly voting with their dollars for brands they deem socially responsible. And Millennials, who by 2020 are expected to eclipse baby boomer as the nation’s biggest spending group, are particularly drawn to brands with a social conscience. So for retailers, implementing ethical retailing practices – be it by selling fair trade and eco-friendly products to funding key causes like education or the fight against hunger – is not only about doing right, it’s also good business.

Uniqlo Ramps Up Expansion

Japan’s largest retailer Uniqlo, now with a mere 20 stores in the U.S., will almost double its store count in the fall with the roll out of 18 units in eight weeks, reported Women’s Wear Daily.

The takeaway: With its casual clothing aimed at consumers from 8 to 80 and a mission to storm the U.S. market, is Uniqlo poised to become the Gap for the 21^st century? Uniqlo’s first foray into the American market in 2005 flopped. It opened three stores in malls when nobody had heard of the chain, only to later close them by year’s end.

Its expansion strategy this time around, which began in 2011, has been to make a bold splash with massive stores in big cities.

But does Uniqlo’s distinct assortment of simply-cut clothing (although it’s been sprinkling the mix with more fashion-driven items), tricked out with high-performance features such as its exclusive Heattech heat-retaining technology, have enough widespread appeal in the U.S. to support hundreds of stores?