Section
Formats, footprints, and the future of physical retail.
17 articles
Third-quarter sales grew 2.3% like for like, in line with the first half. Then a weekend of looting in French cities, followed by local curfews, took the margin target from +25 basis points to between zero and 15. The repair bill is the small part of the problem.
Third-quarter operating profit reached 6.04 billion kronor on sales up just 1% in local currencies. The margin came from purchasing, costs and a one-time tariff effect, and the answer to flat sales is more buying inside the season, Inditex's home ground.
Sales rose 7.6% to 19.8 billion euros and the gross margin widened to 58.7%. Operating expenses grew 8.3%, transport costs from the Middle East bit, and the shares slipped anyway. The autumn started at 9%.
Revenue fell 4% and comparable sales 9%, and the full-year outlook was cut. A 134.5 million dollar refund of IEEPA tariffs flattered the margins, and it will not repeat.
Target beat on comps and traffic and the stock rose. Walmart raised its outlook and fell about 9%. Both quarters carried a large IEEPA tariff refund, and what each company did with it explains most of the gap.
The chain drug industry's annual gathering opens August 15 at the Menino Convention Center. It is not a product show, it is a meetings show, and the first one held since Rite Aid disappeared and Walgreens went private.
Christian Louboutin CEO Alexis Mourot used his Shoptalk Europe session in Barcelona to lay out something rare in luxury: an actual operating framework for desirability. Notes from the Headliner Stage.
Célia Megias, visiting Shoptalk Europe in Barcelona, gives us her impressions as Retail to See's fashion and beauty director. Postcards from the main stage, the exhibition halls, and the conversations in between.
From Selfridges to Galeries Lafayette, Europe's grand magasins are cutting floor space and leasing entire wings to mono-brand tenants. The economics behind the retreat.
From beauty to athleisure to grocery, retailers keep shrinking the box. We break down whether the smaller footprint actually moves EBITDA or just trades problems.
Between Inditex pushing up and ultra-fast-fashion pulling down, Europe's mid-priced fashion retailers are running out of room. The consolidation has started.
After a decade of self-checkout, grocers are quietly rebuilding the front end. The new design borrows from convenience stores, not airports.
Ship-from-store solves a lot, but the labor it consumes inside the four walls is rarely included in the omnichannel ROI story. We tally what's actually getting absorbed.
Retail closures are running hotter than 2024 but cooler than 2020. We track who's pulling out of which markets and what's replacing them.
The "store of the future" pilots that drew headlines through 2024 are being quietly evaluated. The data on which ones earn a national rollout - and which ones don't - is finally landing.
The post-pandemic labor crunch has eased, but minimum wage step-ups, scheduling rules, and tighter shrink controls have pushed effective labor cost above where most operators planned.
Beyond the keynote schedule, the conversations at Shoptalk this March kept coming back to three things: store labor, retail media measurement, and what to do about returns.