Receipts from weeklong hhgregg Black Friday deals are expected to make up for sales not made in stores on Thanksgiving Day, hhgregg CEO Bob Riesbeck emailed us Wednesday. “We believe we’ll make up any losses by having sales on Black Friday and throughout the week, both in-store and online,” Riesbeck said. The retailers’ distribution centers will have a “skeleton crew” working Thanksgiving evening to load trucks for stores ahead of Black Friday, Riesbeck said, but the centers will have Wednesday evening “off.” The retailer said Tuesday all stores will be closed on Thanksgiving this year to allow employees to spend the day with family and friends (see 1610110041). Hhgregg and GameStop have urged other retailers to follow suit.
Target closed on a five-year, $2.5 billion unsecured revolving credit agreement with Bank of America and Citibank, it said in an SEC filing Wednesday. Target may increase the credit facility commitments up to an additional $500 million, subject to conditions. The agreement terminates a $2.25 billion five-year credit agreement that was to expire in October 2018.
Sonos continued its flurry of retail expansion Thursday, announcing that home furnishings retailer West Elm began rolling out “retail experiences” featuring Sonos products in stores and on its e-commerce site. All U.S. West Elm stores are due to be selling Sonos gear by spring. West Elm also created a prototype Sonos Listening Lab in its Broadway Upper West Side location in New York that will be replicated in more than a dozen stores nationally, they said. Beginning in October, West Elm will also offer in-home setup, starting at $129, of Sonos products as part of its Style + Service program in select stores located in Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, New York and New Jersey, said the companies. Sonos, which opened its first store, the flagship location in New York’s SoHo neighborhood, in July (see 1607190049), also recently announced its products will sell through Rough Trade music stores and Apple stores (see 1609260040). Sonos products will be featured in West Elm’s November catalog, they said.
Retailer demand for indoor-location technologies for use with mobile shopping apps continues to grow strongly with installations set to break 200,000 stores globally by the end of 2016, ABI Research said in a Wednesday report. However, though costs to deploy and manage an indoor-location solution in a store are low, retail has yet to see an app or deployment that exploits the available technology in a way that “captures the imagination of the public at grand scale,” said the research firm. It predicts “a shift away from traditional retail apps and proximity-based advertising will unlock the true capabilities of indoor-location technology in retail,” it said. “Retailers remain trapped between the need for an effective mobile strategy and a failure to drive app adoption,” said the firm, which estimates in-store app usage remains stuck at below 10 percent among the many shoppers with smartphones that enter the store. “App fatigue is a reality for many consumers,” it said. “The last thing they need is a separate, unhelpful app for every store they visit. As a result, some retailers are reconsidering the viability of mobile apps altogether.”
Sonos Play:1 and Play:5 speakers began selling at Apple.com Monday and beginning Oct. 5 will be sold in 468 Apple stores worldwide, said a Sonos blog post. Customers who buy a Sonos speaker from Apple by Dec. 31 will receive a free three-month Apple Music gift card, Sonos said. Asked whether the Sonos speakers in Apple stores would demo voice control by the Amazon Echo Dot, which Sonos announced last month (see 1608300040), a Sonos spokeswoman emailed us: “The hands-on Sonos and Apple Music demo station will entail a guided Sonos app experience on the iPad Pro to let shoppers see and hear the experience for themselves.” On whether the Apple relationship will extend to Sonos’ other amplifiers, networking products and speakers, the spokeswoman said Sonos didn’t have anything else to share about plans with Apple stores. On whether Sonos is working with Apple to integrate Siri voice control with Sonos speakers, the Sonos spokeswoman said, “We’re working with the most innovative companies in the world, including Apple, Amazon, Spotify, Google, Microsoft and more to create the ultimate sound experience at home.”
Holiday season hiring kicked off last week at h.h. gregg, which said in a Friday announcement it’s hiring 500 more store associates for 220 locations in 19 states. Candidates can apply by texting hhgregg to 51893 and will receive a text back with a link to the company's online application. Positions to be filled range from entry level to senior management, and previous retail experience is preferred but not required, it said. Candidates also can apply online. Meanwhile, the retailer held a grand opening last week for a Fine Lines luxury appliance store in its Cranberry, Pennsylvania, location. As part of the celebration, a Haier 720p 32-inch LED-lit TV was halved in price to $98, said an emailed advertisement.
Retailers should investigate opportunities and threats posed by smartphone indoor location technologies “or run the risk of losing control of the mobile experience in their stores,” said an ABI Research report Thursday. Companies including Apple, Baidu and Google plan to release smartphone-based indoor location technologies to developers within the next year, while location deployments in retail stores have largely been focused on infrastructure-based technologies, it said. Retailers have largely ignored the opportunities offered by mobile devices and are “in danger of repeating the mistakes they made with eCommerce,” said analyst Patrick Connolly. “The days of loyalty cards and paper coupons are ending and retailers do not seem ready,” said Connolly, saying retailers need to “take control” of digitization in their stores and put technologies like indoor location to work. Handset-based indoor location technologies allow retailers to measure marketing campaign performance, streamline in-store processes, create new advertising revenue streams, remove shopping friction and create “shock and awe” moments,” he said. Indoor location technology also lets retailers engage with more customers, said ABI. Initiatives like Google Nearby eliminate the need for in-store apps, but as those tools become available to all developers, the market will “rapidly embrace” the technology, creating opportunities for third parties to deploy location technologies in any retail store, Connolly said. He envisioned a third-party shopping app with an accurate, detailed map of a shopping outlet that could direct store offers and ads to individual customers, something that could “become a reality very soon.”
The 2016 holiday season will be “the year of video game and tech deals,” said shopping website BFAds Tuesday, 65 days before Black Friday, in an email to subscribers. The site predicted a season of earlier sales and better prices. Among its observations: double the number of last year's 29 4K 50-inch TV deals due to the "gaining popularity of 4K," but prices are expected to be on par with last year's, said BFAds. Those not looking for 4K will be able to nab a 55-inch HDTV for $200 or less, it said. The deals site posted a rumor that Kohl’s might be starting its Black Friday sales at 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving. Kohl’s didn’t immediately comment. In videogames, a mid-cycle console refresh this year means “tons of deals on video games,” said BFAds. The site predicts Xbox One bundles will hit $200-$250 “with extras” and the “lowest prices ever” for Microsoft Xbox 360 consoles (no longer manufactured) and games. PS4 bundle will hover around $300, it said, but with games and gift cards thrown in. Smart home devices are expected to make the deals list this year, said BFAds, citing Philips Hue LED bulbs and light strips. Tablets will be widely discounted, it said, and Fitbits will be sale-priced for Christmas and for New Year’s resolution shopping. The Kindle Fire will come down to $35, the Kindle Fire Kid's Tablet to less than $60, and Fire Sticks to $20, it forecast. BFAds also predicted attractive deals for Echo Dot bundles, Amazon Tap and other Alexa-powered devices. And iPhone 7 bonuses are likely to include store gift cards, accessories and no-money-down offers, it said.
Axis Communications developed an IP-based smart sound system for vertical markets such as retail applications, said the company in a Monday news release. The all-in-one speaker system -- combining an amplifier, mixer, digital signal processing, streaming functionality, mic, power supply and loudspeaker -- requires a single cable using Power over Ethernet technology to send power and data to each unit. The speakers can by addressed and controlled individually or combined for universal commands. Speakers can be grouped into zones for targeted background music, live or prerecorded announcements with variable volume control, said the company. Retailers can create and schedule their own MP3 playlists from a speaker’s offline playlist on SD card or from audio streaming services, said Axis. Announcements can be scheduled from prerecorded audio files or triggered by an event captured by a surveillance camera, it said.
Same-store CE sales at Conn’s fell 11.6 percent in Q2 ended July 31, it said in a Thursday earnings announcement. Unit volume in the CE category fell 10.1 percent, though average selling price jumped 5.1 percent, including an 8.5 percent increase in TV ASPs, it said. CE was 21.9 percent of Conn’s product sales in Q2 compared with 23.7 percent in the same quarter a year earlier, it said. In “higher-margin” furniture and mattresses, the share of total product sales in the quarter was 35.2 percent compared with 33.7 percent a year earlier, said CEO Norm Miller on a Thursday earnings call.