Whether you’re hoping to do something more meaningful with your kids than just hitting the mall, or if you’re just looking for some gifts that give back, here are some ideas that could bring more joy this holiday season.
Gathering friends or family together to assemble a gift box for a needy recipient could be a new, purposeful holiday tradition that you start this year.
Kynd Kits are an activity for the whole family. You choose a cause or group of people important to you, and then request the corresponding kit.
Each kit will contain items specifically requested by people in those groups. You assemble the pieces together, write a card, then send it off. Among the recipients you can choose from this year: the homeless, victims of domestic violence, senior citizens, LGBTQ people and foster children.
If your family would like to help a foster child this holiday season, Together We Rise is helping kids without permanent homes by providing colorful bags to tote their items around in. (Many foster kids lug their worldly possessions around in trash bags.) They send you a panel to decorate, that you then send back. They attach each artwork panel to a duffel bag, which is stuffed with a teddy bear, a blanket, a hygiene kit and a coloring book.
A family art project can brighten up the walls of a long-term care facility. The Foundation for Hospital Art will send you a kit, complete with pre-drawn canvases and art supplies. You color it in, create one panel of your own design and send it back with the pre-addressed UPS label.
If you can knit or crochet, consider helping Knots of Love. You could knit a beanie to support a patient going through chemotherapy or a blanket to warm a baby in the NICU.
The Salvation Army’s “Angel Tree” program is online again this year, making it easy to shop for a child in need. Just enter your zip code, add the requested items from their registry to your cart, and the Salvation Army does the rest.
And if you want to spend your money at a local bookstore but don’t want to leave the house, consider buying from bookshop.org. They partner with independent book sellers across the country to send your dollars to stores that really need it.
If you want to support Black-owned businesses this Christmas (or any time of year) the website and app https://www.supportblackowned.com/ helps you find shops and services all over the US.
The EatOkra app helps you find Black-owned restaurants and food services (buying a gift card helps keep small eateries in business).
You can also search Instagram by using the hashtag #SupportBlackBusiness.
Finally, many larger retailers are giving back this season. If you just want a name-brand gift sure to wow a picky tween or teen, many stores and brands partner with charities to give back over the holiday season.
Some companies even make it a yearlong mission to do good.
If you are looking for a present for someone worried about the environment, Patagonia gives a portion of all profits to environmental causes.
Sock company Bombas donates a pair of socks to a needy person, for every pair sold.
And what Christmas stocking couldn’t use a fuzzy pencil case and some unicorn-themed erasers? Yoobi sells colorful pens, pencils and stationery, and for every item purchased, they donate a school supply to a child in need.
There are countless things about our homeland that Australians miss after moving abroad: the magnificent landscape, the laid-back lifestyle and that endless blue sky, to name a few.
But something as simple as a trip to the supermarket can leave us expats – according to some reports there are an estimated one million of us – feeling desperately homesick.
While some foods are the result of cultural influencessuch as the Chiko Roll,others are uniquely Aussie, like Golden Gaytime ice cream.
And who could forget the most famous of them all, Vegemite, which turns 100 on October 25.
According to the National Museum of Australia, it was invented by chemist CP Callister in Melbourne in 1923 when Australian food manufacturer Fred Walker asked him to create a product similar to British Marmite.
“During the Second World War, Vegemite captured the Australian market. Marmite was unobtainable and the Australian Army supplied Vegemite to its troops,” says the museum in a post highlighting defining symbols of Australia.
“In the 1950s and 60s, despite acquisition by the American company Kraft, Vegemite became a distinctively ‘Australian’ food. It featured in songs, on souvenirs and other popular culture ephemera. Vegemite returned to Australian ownership in 2017 when purchased by dairy company Bega.”
More on this famed brown spread below as we round up the A-Z of Aussie favorites:
Introduced in 1927, this simple dessert is an Australian classic.
Every Australian child grew up singing the famous 1930s jingle: “I like Aeroplane Jelly, Aeroplane Jelly for me!”
The brand’s “Bertie the Aeroplane” mascot was named after inventor Bert Appleroth – a Sydney tram driver who is said to have made the first batch in his bathtub.
Although now owned by an American company, Aeroplane Jelly has hardly changed since grandma was a girl.
Sure, there are plenty of brands of jelly available worldwide, but when it comes time to make a trifle or treat for the kids, Aussie parents can’t resist this familiar favorite.
An Australian variety of mango that isn’t grown anywhere else in the world, the Bowen is considered the best of the best.
It was first discovered in the northern Queensland town of Bowen, hence the name, but is also known as Kensington Pride.
Bigger and juicer than other varieties, Bowen mangoes account for 80% of mangoes produced in Australia. Some are exported but arguably not enough for the huge number of mango-loving expats.
To Aussies, mangoes are the taste of summer. No matter where we are in the world, the craving for a Bowen mango usually kicks in around Christmas.
This strange little deep-fried snack has been an Australian icon since 1950 when it was first sold by an enterprising boilermaker at football games.
Inspired by Chinese spring rolls, the exact recipe is a little unclear but the combination of meat, veg and some unknown spices hits the spot.
Best consumed with a couple of potato scallops and a soft drink, the Chiko Roll is the go-to for tradieson their lunch break or those 3 a.m. munchies on your way home from the pub.
And the only place to get them is a typical Aussie takeaway joint.
Dukkah – a humble blend of crushed Middle Eastern spices, herbs and nuts from Egypt – has been embraced by Australian foodies.
Its versatility is one of the reasons this condiment is so popular. Dukkah can be used as a garnish, a coating on a piece of meat or mixed with olive oil as a dip for bread.
A number of producers have given the basic dukkah recipe an Australian twist by adding native ingredients, such as lemon myrtle, macadamia nuts, wattleseed, saltbush and pepperleaf.
Expats can find many variations in Australian supermarkets and, fortunately, they’re often sold in packets small enough to sneak into a suitcase.
Australia is one of the few countries where it is considered perfectly acceptable to eat the coat of arms.
Exceptionally lean and gamey, emu and kangaroo tend to be popular among adventurous chefs in Australia.
But when living abroad, neither is easy to get your hands on.
A number of restaurants and specialty butchers offer native meats, but the expense involved in raising emus, in particular, means it’s harder to come by.
Thanks to the influx of Greek and Italian immigrants who brought “proper coffee” to Australia post WWII, we have become a nation of coffee snobs.
The flat white is almost Aussie enough to be called the national drink.
All over the world, café goers and baristas have been confounded as Aussie expats seek out their favorite brew abroad.
With less milk than a latte and without the froth of a cappuccino, the flat white requires special attention (it’s all in the pouring).
One of the first questions asked on expat forums: “Where can I get a decent flat white in this town?”
And it’s usually the first thing ordered at the airport café when back on home soil.
Ice creams feature highly on the most-wanted lists of expats, so it’s only natural we highlight them here.
Milky Paddle Pops and fruity Splice have been popular summer treats since the 1960s.
Likewise, Weis Bars have also been around for more than 60 years, and the mango and cream concoctions invoke memories of lazy summer afternoons.
But the number one, the crème de la crème, is the Golden Gaytime – a vanilla and toffee ice cream coated in chocolate and dipped in crunchy biscuit pieces that has inspired many a replica over the years.
While the burger itself is not an Australian invention, we have added some unconventional ingredients that make the Aussie version truly memorable.
Take the essentials – a beef patty, cheese, tomato, lettuce, grilled onions, tomato sauce (ketchup) – and add beetroot, pineapple, a fried egg and bacon, and you have yourself a massive mouthful.
A quick online search reveals variations that include pickled beetroot and spicy mayo, among others, but the classic Aussie burger celebrates simplicity.
It’s easy enough to replicate at home, but nothing beats the experience of ducking into the local milk-bar (café), or fish and chip shop, to enjoy a burger and a milkshake after a day at the beach.
The Iced VoVo – a biscuit covered in pink fondant, raspberry jam and shredded coconut – is a national treasure.
Produced by Arnott’s since the early 1900s, the iconic treat was mentioned by former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in his victory speech after the 2007 election, leading to a spike in sales.
“Friends, tomorrow, the work begins. You can have a strong cup of tea if you want, even an Iced VoVo on the way through. But the celebration stops there,” Rudd said.
Not often found for sale overseas, this sweet treat is one to enjoy with a cup of tea when you’re home visiting mum.
Ask any Australian expat what they miss most about ‘home’ and their list is sure to include at least one type of junk food – the absence of which is felt most keenly at kids’ birthday parties.
Allen’s Lollies (candy) have been around for decades and Minties, Fantales, Jaffas, Snakes and the Classic Party Mix remain as popular as ever.
The Aussie public doesn’t seem to mind that they are all owned by Nestlé, which is headquartered in Switzerland.
Fairy Bread – essentially white bread covered in butter and sprinkles – is another party staple that manages to be devoid of nutrition but highly nostalgic.
On return trips to Australia, expats are known to bulk-buy chocolate bars like Cadbury Cherry Ripes, Caramello Koalas and ever-popular Violet Crumbles.
When it comes to savory junk foods, Smith’s Chips, cheesy Twisties and Nobby’s nuts are synonymous with snacking – and nothing produced overseas comes close.
We tend to lump all Middle Eastern meat-and-pita combos under the heading of “kebab” and be done with it.
Of course, there are subtle differences between doner kebabs, shawarma, souvlaki, and gyros – in both ingredients and quality – depending on the source.
Connoisseurs agree that pork gyros (Greek flatbread filled with rotisserie-roasted meat) found in more legitimate venues around Australia are the best.
Consider the sauce dripping down the front of your shirt an essential part of the experience.
Proving that Aussies love anything with jam and coconut, the lamington is the country’s favorite cake.
Named after Lord Lamington, Queensland’s eighth governor, these delightful squares of sponge cake – dipped in chocolate and coated with coconut – have become nothing short of a culinary icon.
There are entire websites (and an Australian Lamington Appreciation Society) devoted to the origins of the lamington and how to make them. Achieving the right ratio of chocolate, jam and coconut is essential.
There are pies, and then there are Aussie meat pies.
Synonymous with afternoons at the football pitch, brands like Four ‘N Twenty and Vili’s have cornered the market for mass-produced pies.
Small local outfits (like the Bemboka Pie Shop and Harry’s Café de Wheels) are institutions in their own right.
Everyone has a favorite type, whether it’s shepherd’s pie, a floater with peas, cheese and bacon or straight-up meat.
The only requirement? The pie is served piping hot with tomato sauce … and eaten one-handed.
With Four ‘N Twenty now exporting to the United States and parts of Asia, some expats can get their pie fix without venturing too far.
Australia’s love affair with Asian food is no secret, and our northern neighbors strongly influence what we put on our plates.
Even Aussies living in Asia admit to craving “Aussie Chinese” or “Aussie Thai” – dishes that give a nod to the original but are not as authentic as the real thing. In fact, some would say they’re potentially even better.
We’d argue the fresh, high-quality produce and quality meats available in Australia bring out the best in Asian dishes.
It’s fair to say that oysters are an acquired taste, but for those with a penchant for the salty mollusks, Australia produces some of the best in the world.
You’ll find two main species in Aussie waters: rock oysters and Pacific.
As bivalves, oysters filter the water around them and their location dictates their flavor.
The pristine waters along Australia’s coastline provide the perfect conditions for oysters, and they rarely need any accompaniment.
There’s nothing quite like eating these slippery snacks straight off the rocks – export just doesn’t do them justice.
The origins of this meringue-based dessert are hotly contested.
Recent research suggests that the Pav didn’t come from the antipodes at all, but nevertheless it remains a firm favorite.
Meringue, cream and plenty of fruit are the key ingredients, though there are no hard and fast rules about what has to be included.
Expats living in tropical climes often bemoan how challenging it is to get a decent meringue, given humid weather can turn it soft and sticky, so Pavlova is a rare treat.
Q: Quandong and quince
Both the native quandong and the foreign quince lend themselves to some of our favorite condiments and desserts.
Similar to a wild peach, the quandong is incredibly versatile and nutritious and can be made into juice, jam, filling for pies or eaten raw.
The quince is a relative of the apple and pear, and while several varieties are grown commercially in Australia the fruit is best known as the star in Maggie Beer’s quince paste – the only way to eat soft cheese.
Bundaberg Rum, to be more specific. Or just Bundy, as it’s known to locals.
This Australian beverage was created way back in 1888 to deal with an oversupply of molasses in Queensland’s sugarcane region.
Producers believe that it’s the sugar, grown in volcanic soil, that gives Bundy its distinct, rich flavor.
The distillery produces 60,000 bottles a day and the factory was the subject of a National Geographic documentary in 2013.
To say this drop has cult status would be an understatement.
There are so many foods starting with S – smashed avocado, SAO biscuits, sausages – that could represent the land down under.
But Australia’s best produce comes from the sea and expats fondly reminisce about mornings spent at the fish markets picking up the catch of the day before special occasions.
While we’re known to “throw a shrimp on the barbie” there are some creatures that are far more popular.
Barramundi, Balmain or Moreton Bay bugs, abalone, and of course, prawns are just some of the native seafood worth queuing for.
Technically a junk food, Tim Tam biscuits are so famous, so overwhelmingly popular, that they deserve their own spot on this list.
The original Tim Tams are the best: A chocolate-coated sandwich of two malted chocolate biscuits with chocolate cream filling.
Arnott’s, the manufacturers, now export to more than 40 countries around the world, so you can get your fix whether you’re skiing the slopes of Niseko, in Japan, or catching rays on a Tahitian beach.
Uncle Tobys began producing oats way back in 1893. But it wasn’t until the 1970s, when convenience foods started hitting the shelves, that they developed their now famous muesli bars.
The ultimate lunchbox treat or after-school snack, kids had the luxury of choosing not only the flavor, but also the texture.
Many a playground war has been fought over which was best – crunchy or chewy. For the record, we’re firmly in the crunchy camp.
These days the range has grown to include yoghurt and choc-chip toppings. There’s even a lamington flavor.
No round-up of Aussie foods would be complete without this ubiquitous salty brown spread, which turns 100 on October 25.
Twenty million jars of Vegemite are sold each year – that’s one for every Australian citizen.
Now owned by Bega Cheese, there was great joy when the icon returned to Australian ownership several years ago.
No one else quite understands the appeal of our favorite toast topping.
For those living in countries where it’s not yet exported, Vegemite comes in massive 560 gram jars and travel-sized tubes.
While there are similar cereals available around the world, there’s nothing quite like “Australia’s favorite breakfast.”
These small biscuits made from wholegrain wheat are occasionally available in supermarkets overseas, but they generally sell out pretty quickly.
Aussie mums have been known to stock up on them on trips to the motherland.
Best eaten with a little bit of sugar, some chopped banana and a lot of milk, Weet-Bix is promoted as family-friendly health food. But we’d love them even if they weren’t good for us.
Another product of sunny Queensland, XXXX (pronounced four-ex) originated in Victoria in 1878 before moving north, where it is still produced today.
XXXX has endeared itself to Aussies as a great brew and a big supporter of sports and small communities.
It’s not widely available outside of Australia, but if you’re an expat in China or Dubai, you may be able to find it in a bar near you.
Small freshwater crustaceans, yabbies are similar to lobsters – both prized as delicacies.
They’re hardy little creatures, and if you grew up on a farm chances are you spent your summers fishing for yabbies in the local creek.
Yabbies have a lot of meat on them, mostly in the tail and claws, and it tastes sweet and succulent when cooked right.
Expats might find these clawed crustaceans in restaurants, but you’re unlikely to find them in your local supermarket.
The zucchini fritter is yet another delicious byproduct of immigration.
Depending on who you ask, they’re either Turkish and served with yogurt, or Greek, in which case they come with tzatziki.
Either way, olive oil should ooze out when you take a bite.
In some parts of Australia, you can find zucchini fritters at a local takeaway,next to the potato scallops and Chiko Rolls.
These fried pancakes may have more health benefits than your average fried snack, but they are no less delicious.
Rite Aid, which had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, is now preparing to shed almost 100stores nationwide as part of its restructuring efforts.
The first tranche of stores to be sold — both leased and owned — is located in nine states, according to A&G Real Estate Partners, which is advising the drug store chain on its real estate portfolio. The states include California (17 stores), Maryland (4), Michigan (16), New Jersey (8), New York (17), Ohio (4), Oregon (2), Pennsylvania (17), New Hamphire (2) and Washington (10), Alabama (1), Idaho (1).
The writing has been on the wall for some time for Rite Aid, the third-biggest standalone pharmacy chain in the US, as the entire drug store retail sector struggles to compete with Amazon and big-box chains like Walmart, Target and Costco moving deeper into the space and offering more customer-friendly alternatives to the nationwide pharmacy chains.
Compounding its problems were legal troubles stemming from accusations of filing unlawful opioid prescriptions for customers.
Rite Aid is in much worse financial shape than its competitors. Over the past six years, Rite Aid has tallied nearly $3 billion in losses.
While it has secured $3.5 billion in financing and debt reduction agreements from lenders to keep the company afloat through its bankruptcy, Rite Aid said it would accelerate store closures and sell off some of its businesses, including prescription benefit provider Elixir Solutions. Bankruptcy could also help resolve the company’s legal disputes at a vastly reduced cost.
As it reevaluates its portfolio of stores, these are the Rite Aid locations that are currently up for sale:
SEC Alabama Ave. & Pike St. in Monroeville, Alabama
920 East Valley Blvd in Alhambra, California
571 Bellevue Road in Atwater, California
3029 Harbor Blvd. in Costa Mesa, California
139 North Grand Ave. in Covina, California
20572 Homestead Road in Cupertino, California
24829 Del Pradoin Dana Point, California
7859 Firestone Blvd. in Downey, California
8509 Irvine Center Drive in Irvine, California
15800 Imperial Hwy. in La Mirada, California
30222 Crown Valley Pkwy. in Laguna Niguel, California
4046 South Centinela Ave. in Los Angeles, California
499 Alvarado St. in Monterey, California
1670 Main St. in Ramona, California
1309 Fulton Ave. in Sacramento, California
901 Soquel Ave. in Santa Cruz, California
19701 Yorba Linda Blvd. in Yorba Linda, California
25906 Newport Road in Menifee, California
1600 North Main St. in Meridian, Idaho
5808 Ritchie Hwy. in Baltimore, Maryland
5 Bel Air South Pkwy. in Bel Air, Maryland
728 East Pulaski Hwy. in Elkton, Maryland
7501 Ritchie Hwy. In Glen Burnie, Maryland
35250 South Gratiot Ave. in Clinton Township, Michigan
36485 Garfield Road. in Clinton Township, Michigan
1900 East 8 Mile Road. in Detroit, Michigan
25922 Middlebelt Road. in Farmington Hills, Michigan
924 West Main St. in Fremont, Michigan
715 South Clinton St. in Grand Ledge, Michigan
3100 East Michigan Ave. in Jackson, Michigan
15250 24 Mile Road in Macomb, Michigan
1243 U.S. 31 South in Manistee, Michigan
15181 Telegraph Road in Redford, Michigan
320 N Main St. in Redford, Michigan
51037 Van Dyke Ave. in Shelby Township, Michigan
109 North Whittemore St. in St. Johns, Michigan
102 North Centerville Road in Sturgis, Michigan
9155 Telegraph Road in Taylor, Michigan
47300 Pontiac Trail in Wixom, Michigan
205-209 Main St. in Berlin, New Hampshire
Grove St. and Route 101 in Peterborough, New Hampshire
37 Juliustown Road in Browns Mills, New Jersey
1426 Mount Ephraim Ave. in Camden, New Jersey
1636 Route 38, Suite 49 in Lumberton, New Jersey
210 Bridgeton Pike in Mantua, New Jersey
108 Swedesboro Road in Mullica Hill, New Jersey
Route 33 and Robbinsville- Edinburg Road in Robbinsville, New Jersey
773 Hamilton St. in Somerset, New Jersey
1434 South Black Horse Pike in Williamstown, New Jersey
836 Sunrise Hwy. in Bay Shore, New York
452 Main St. in Buffalo, New York
15 Arnold St. in Buffalo, New York
901 Merrick Road in Copiague, New York
577 Larkfield Road in East Northport, New York
2 Whitney Ave. in Floral Park, New York
115-10 Merrick Blvd. in Jamaica, New York
2453 Elmwood Ave. in Kenmore, New York
3131 Hempstead Turnpike in Levittown, New York
700-43 Patchogue-Yaphank in Medford, New York
4188 Broadway in New York, New York
195 8th Ave. in New York, New York
1033 St. Nicholas Ave. in New York, New York
593 Old Town Road in Port Jefferson, New York
101 Main St. in Sayville, New York
65 Route 111 in Smithtown, New York
397 Sunrise Hwy. in West Patchogue, New York
120 South Main St. in New Carlisle, Ohio
Euclid & Strathmore in East Cleveland, Ohio
1204 Gettysburg Ave. in Dayton, Ohio
2323 Broadview Road in Cleveland, Ohio
981 Medford Center in Medford, Oregon
4346 N.E. Cully Blvd. in Portland, Oregon
2722 West 9th St. in Chester, Pennsylvania
5990 University Blvd. in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania
1709 Liberty Ave. in Erie, Pennsylvania
6090 Route 30 in Greensburg, Pennsylvania
301 Eisenhower Drive in Hanover, Pennsylvania
1730 Wilmington Road in New Castle, Pennsylvania
700 Stevenson Blvd. in New Kensington, Pennsylvania
350 Main St. in Pennsburg, Pennsylvania
5612 North 5th St. in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
2401 East Venango St. in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Rite Aid filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Sunday, a casualty of a miserable environment for drug stores, exacerbated by its runner-up status to bigger chains and expensive legal battles for allegedly filling unlawful opioid prescriptions.
The bankruptcy was not a surprise. Its bigger rivals, CVS and Walgreens, are also facing many of the same problems. They, too, are closing stores as Amazon and big-box chains like Walmart, Target and Costco serve as more customer-friendly alternatives to nationwide pharmacy chains.
But Rite Aid is in much worse financial shape than its competitors and unable to weather the storm that has been beating down on the industry.On Thursday, it filed a notice to the US Securities and Exchange Commission saying it would be unable to file its latest quarterly financial report because it was looking at “strategic alternatives,” which is Wall Street speak for “considering bankruptcy.”
In that filing, the company said it expected its losses would increase significantly in the past quarter, which is saying something, considering it lost about three quarters of a billion dollars between March 2022 and March 2023 — and another $307 billion between March and May this year. Over the past six years, Rite Aid has tallied nearly $3 billion in losses.
At the beginning of June, the last time the company filed a financial report, Rite Aid had just $135.5 million of cash on hand -— and $3.3 billion in long-term debt, which exceeded the value of the company’s assets by nearly $1 billion. With rising interest rates, that debt wasn’t cheap to finance.
“It was always a matter of when, not if, Rite Aid would file for bankruptcy,” said Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData, in a note to investors. “The company has been deep in the red for the past six years.”
The company said in a statement it had secured $3.5 billion in financing and debt reduction agreements from lenders to keep the company afloat through its bankruptcy.
It said it would accelerate its pace of store closures and sell off some of its businesses, including prescription benefit provider Elixir Solutions. Bankruptcy could also help resolve the company’s legal disputes at a vastly reduced cost.
As part of the bankruptcy plan, Rite Aid appointed a new CEO, Jeff Stein, who will also serve as the head of restructuring and a board member. Stein, in the statement, said the company plans to remain in business.
“With the support of our lenders, we look forward to strengthening our financial foundation, advancing our transformation initiatives and accelerating the execution of our turnaround strategy,” he said. “In doing so, we will be even better able to deliver the healthcare products and services our customers and their families rely on -— now and into the future.”
Rite Aidhas had an interim CEO since January 2023.
Rite Aid’s losing battle against mounting debt was exacerbated by its legal troubles stemming from accusations of filing unlawful opioid prescriptions for customers.
The Department of Justice filed suit against the company in March, claiming that it knowingly processed “unlawful prescriptions for controlled substances.” That stands in violation of the False Claims Act and Controlled Substances Act. The government accused Rite Aid of missing “obvious red flags” when it filled the prescriptions for addictive pain killers.
When the US Justice Department filed its lawsuit, Attorney General Merrick Garland said the department would use “every tool at our disposal” to hold Rite Aid accountable for contributing to the opioid epidemic.”
Walgreens, CVS and others settled similar lawsuits over the past few years, but they remain in better financial shape and were largely able to weather the tens of billions of dollars owed to various government agencies in settlements.
More than half a million people have died from drug overdoses in the United States between 1999 and 2020, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Rite Aid is a distant third-largest nationwide standalone pharmacy chain in the United States — and the seventh largest pharmacy overall, when taking into account big box chains. It has more than 2,200 stores in 17 states.
It was offered a $17 billion lifeline in 2015 when Walgreens offered to buy the chain. But the deal was met with stiff scrutiny from US regulators who feared the combination would violate federal antitrust laws and reduce competition in the drug store market.
Ultimately, in 2017, the companies agreed to a smaller, $4.4 billion deal, in which Walgreens bought just under 2,000 Rite Aid locations, leaving Rite Aid diminished in stature and unable to compete at the scale of its bigger rivals.
— CNN’s Nathaniel Meyersohn and Juliana Liu contributed to this report
An antitrust lawsuit from 17 states and the Federal Trade Commission this week against Amazon represents the US government’s biggest regulatory challenge yet against the e-commerce juggernaut.
The landmark case targets Amazon’s retail platform, alleging that it’s harmed shoppers and sellers alike on a massive scale.
Through an alleged “self-reinforcing cycle of dominance and harm,” the plaintiffs claim, Amazon has run an illegal monopoly in ways that are “paying off for Amazon, but at great cost to tens of millions of American households and hundreds of thousands of sellers.”
In response, Amazon has argued the case is “wrong on the facts and the law” and warned that a victory for the FTC would lead to slower shipping times or higher prices, including perhaps for Amazon’s Prime subscription service.
The plaintiffs’ central claim is that Amazon has used a variety of tactics to lure shoppers and sellers onto its platform and then to trap them there, preventing other online retailers like Walmart, Target or eBay from attracting those same consumers and vendors to their own sites.
Walmart, Target and eBay are not parties to the suit.
Not only has that lock-in effect hurt competition between the likes of Amazon and Walmart, the lawsuit claims, but it has also given Amazon confidence it can exploit its sellers and shoppers with impunity — allowing the company to extract ever more value from them without fear those people will leave for a rival platform.
The complaint portrays Amazon as offering a kind of Faustian bargain — first enticing sellers with the ability to access tens of millions of potential customers and drawing in shoppers with low prices and numerous Prime benefits, such as Amazon Music and Prime Video, that other e-commerce platforms can’t hope to match.
Then, in the plaintiffs’ narrative, Amazon takes advantage of sellers’ and shoppers’ dependence by increasing platform fees; bloating its search results with advertising that sellers are forced to buy if they want any hope of reaching shoppers; requiring sellers to use Amazon’s in-house fulfillment services if they want the best seller benefits, including the coveted “Prime” badge; and punishing sellers who try to sell their goods elsewhere online at a lower price than on Amazon.
The overall result, the plaintiffs claim, is a worse experience for Amazon users and artificially high prices for everyone, including on non-Amazon platforms.
“There are internet-wide effects here,” FTC Chair Lina Khan told reporters on a conference call Tuesday.
Amazon has responded that the lawsuit “reveals the Commission’s fundamental misunderstanding of retail.” Amazon’s general counsel, David Zapolsky, wrote in a blog post that the company’s pricing programs for sellers are meant to “help them offer competitive prices,” that consumers “love Prime because it’s such a great experience,” and that the claim “that we somehow force sellers to use our optional services is simply not true.”
A big, swirling question is whether Amazon could be broken up as a result of this suit.
Officially, the FTC is saying that talk of a breakup is premature.
“At this stage, the complaint is really focused on the issue of liability,” Khan said at an event hosted by Bloomberg News on Tuesday, hours after the lawsuit was filed.
If the courts find that Amazon did violate the law, then there could be a separate remedies phase to consider potential penalties.
A breakup is not off the table. The plaintiffs’ complaint, filed in Seattle federal court, suggests that any court order to address the issue could include “structural relief,” a legal term referring to a potential breakup of Amazon.
Khan also left open the possibility that Amazon executives could be held personally liable and added to the case if there is sufficient evidence of their responsibility for Amazon’s alleged misconduct.
“We want to make sure that we are bringing cases against the right defendants,” Khan said in response to a question from CNN about whether the FTC considered naming specific executives in Tuesday’s case. “If we think that there is a basis for doing so, we won’t hesitate to do that.”
Those remarks echo what Khan has said elsewhere about her willingness to name individuals in FTC enforcement actions. Just this month, the FTC added three Amazon officials to a separate consumer protection case dealing with Amazon Prime.
An entire section of the complaint is devoted to a mysterious algorithm Amazon has developed named Project Nessie. Virtually every detail surrounding Project Nessie is heavily redacted from the complaint, but what little is revealed about the program suggests it is an “algorithmic tool” and “pricing system” that has allegedly helped Amazon “extract” an undisclosed amount of “excess profit” from Amazon shoppers.
Amazon did not respond to CNN’s questions about Project Nessie. And Project Nessie isn’t the only matter subject to redactions in the lawsuit; black bars obscuring key business numbers, executive testimony and other evidence are strewn throughout the complaint.
In response to public questioning about the redactions, FTC spokesperson Douglas Farrar said in a statement: “We share the frustration that much of the data and quotes by Amazon executives … is redacted,” and that “we do not believe that there are compelling reasons to keep much of this information secret from the public.”
Farrar added that Amazon has a limited procedural window in which to file arguments for why many of the redacted details should remain sealed.
Whether the FTC can prove in court that Amazon’s actions are illegal will hinge, to a large degree, on showing that Amazon has monopolized certain specific markets.
The exercise is not as simple as pointing to Amazon’s sales figures or the percentage of online shopping that happens on Amazon’s platform. Instead, the plaintiffs have to show that Amazon is part of a well-defined geographic and economic market that it dominates.
The complaint tries to define two such markets in the United States: a market the plaintiffs label as “online superstores” — essentially describing large retail websites that offer many different types of goods, with convenient search, checkout and shipping features for consumers — and a seller-focused “online marketplace services” market that grants third-party vendors access to customers, provides them with sales tools like data analytics and listing services, and a review or product ratings system, among other things.
Expect Amazon to try to challenge how the plaintiffs draw their market boundaries. Zapolsky’s blog post argues that the plaintiffs have attempted to “gerrymander” their proposed markets to make it look like Amazon is more dominant than it is.
Whether that argument succeeds will be up to the court, but it is clear the plaintiffs have carefully crafted their market definitions. For example, they claim that in this case, Amazon can’t be said to compete with online grocery delivery services such as FreshDirect or Instacart because of the unique and often hyper-local constraints of shipping perishable goods. The FTC also wants to exclude medium-sized or interest-specific retail sites that don’t offer a wide variety of products. Presumably this might exclude websites belonging to companies like the pet care retailer Chewy, or the electronics seller Best Buy.
FreshDirect, Instacart, Chewy and Best Buy are not parties to the suit.
Excluding those types of companies allows the plaintiffs to make claims such as that “Amazon’s share of the overall value of goods sold by online superstores is well above 60% — and rising.”
Even as the lawsuit takes on some of the most important parts of Amazon’s retail business, there is much that the suit doesn’t cover.
In recent years, critics of Amazon have lobbed a kitchen sink of antitrust allegations at the company, including that it snoops on seller data to figure out what products it should sell under its own brand; that the fact Amazon sells its own products alongside third-party sellers creates an anticompetitive conflict of interest; that Amazon has used predatory pricing to weaken rivals and to ultimately acquire them; and that Amazon wields enormous power in labor markets. Many of these observations were included as part of a 450-page congressional report that Khan helped author while working as a House Judiciary Committee staffer prior to being appointed to the FTC.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has acknowledged in congressional testimony the possibility that employees may have inappropriately accessed seller data in violation of company policy, but Amazon has broadly disputed most of the other allegations.
Virtually none of those claims, however, are reflected in this week’s lawsuit. The complaint does allege that Amazon biases its search results to rank its own products higher than those sold by third parties, but largely as a byproduct of Amazon’s main moves to protect its dominance.
The complaint doesn’t articulate how regulators came to select some allegations and not others.
When a reporter asked Khan to reflect on her past criticism of how narrowly courts have focused on the issue of consumer prices, in contrast to Tuesday’s Amazon suit that mentions the word “price” some 223 times, not including any redacted parts, Khan said her job was to present the case that stood the best chance of winning.
“As enforcers, we want to both follow the facts where they take us and also look at how the law applies to the facts,” Khan said. “You want to bring the strongest case that you can.”
Dollar General slashed its sales and profit outlook for the year on Thursday, blaming headwinds including weaker consumer spending on non-essential purchases and increasing theft.
Dollar General shares tumbled nearly 17% in pre-market trading Thursday.
The discount store’s challenges are yet another sign of American consumers pulling back on shopping as inflation remains well above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target.
“One of the key reasons for this is because Dollar General’s core customers are feeling the acute pressure of the cost-of-living-crisis,” Neil Saunders, retail analyst and managing director at GlobalData, said in a report Thursday.
“This has been exacerbated by cuts in SNAP payments as temporary pandemic benefits came to an end. As a result, lower-income shoppers are cutting back on non-consumable and indulgent purchases from the chain in a bid to save money,” he said. “Unfortunately, this dynamic will not change any time soon as, if anything, finances will tighten over the second half of the year.”
The discount retailer now expects sales for the full year to rise between 1.3% to 3.3%, down from its previous forecast of a 3.5% to 5% increase. It expects full-year earnings to decline 22% to 34% from its previous estimate of a flat-to-8% decrease.
The retailer said its same-store sales (or sales at stores open at least a year) are expected to range from a decline of about 1% to an increase of 1% for the year, compared to its previous expectation of a 1% to 2%. increase.
For its second quarter, Dollar General logged a 1% drop in its same-store sales. It said weaker customer traffic to its stores hurt sales in the period, combined with budget-conscious shoppers pulling back on higher-priced discretionary purchases such as home items and clothing in favor of lower-priced everyday necessities.
In addition, food stamp recipients started to receive about $90 a month less in benefits, on average, starting in March, as a pandemic hunger relief program comes to an end nationwide three years after Congress approved it.
Meanwhile, close on the heels of Dick’s Sporting Goods sounding the alarm on store theft eating into its profit this year, Dollar General also flagged an increase in product theft, among other factors, hurting its profit.
The company said “an increase in expected inventory shrink for the second half of 2023” factored into its lower guidance. Shrink is an industry term encompassing inventory losses caused by external theft, including organized retail crime, employee theft, human errors, vendor fraud, damaged or mismarked items and other losses.
Retailers large and small say they are struggling to contain an escalation in store crimes — from petty shoplifting to organized sprees of large-scale theft that clear entire shelves of products. Target warned earlier this year that it was bracing to lose half a billion dollars because of rising theft. It reported a large number of incidents of shoplifting and organized retail crime in its stores nationwide.
At the same time, it’s not clear that store crime is growing significantly more serious. Within the industry, at least one major player has argued that the problem is being overhyped.
TikTok is officially kicking off its US e-commerce efforts with the launch of TikTok Shop.
The short-form video platform launched an in-app shopping experience in the United States on Tuesday, according to a company blog post, after months of testing. TikTok Shop allows users to find and directly purchase products used in live videos, tagged in content shown on their algorithm-driven For You page, pinned on brand profiles or marketed in a new “Shop” tab.
For creators, the feature could bring new streams of income by connecting them with brands for commission-based marketing partnerships. TikTok is also offering “Fulfilled by TikTok,” a program that handles all of the logistics for sellers, including storing, packing and shipping.
“With community-driven trends like #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt inspiring people to discover and share the products they love, TikTok is creating a new shopping culture,” the company wrote. “With TikTok Shop, we’re giving people a place to experience the joy of discovering and purchasing new products without leaving the app.”
TikTok is looking to quadruple its merchandise sales by the end of the year to hit $20 billion, according to Bloomberg.
The app’s push into live e-commerce comes as other platforms have struggled with online shopping initiatives.
Meta-owned Instagram killed livestream product tagging and shopping in March andgot rid of the shopping tab on the app’s navigation bar. Facebook also axed live shopping in October. Meanwhile,YouTube partnered with Shopify in 2022 to help creators sell products.
Amazon has been offering Amazon Live since 2019, a streaming hub that sells items through live videos. Amazon Storefront, launched in 2018, also allows creators to build pages that bring together content and product recommendations to sell to followers, for a commission.
TikTok Shop is already available throughout parts of Asia and the United Kingdom. Southeast Asia, a region with a collective population of 630 million – half of them under 30 – is one of TikTok’s biggest markets in terms of user numbers, generating more than 325 million visitors to the app every month, according to Reuters.
But the platform has yet to translate its large user base into a major e-commerce revenue source in the region as it faces fierce competition from bigger rivals of Sea’s Shopee, Alibaba’s Lazada and GoTo’s Tokopedia.
E-commerce transactions across the region reached nearly $100 billion last year, with Indonesia alone accounting for $52 billion, according to data from consultancy Momentum Works.
TikTok facilitated $4.4 billion of transactions across Southeast Asia last year, up from $600 million in 2021, but it still trailed far behind Shopee’s $48 billion of regional merchandise sales in 2022, Momentum Works told Reuters in June.
Cracking the United States has proven even harder. TikTok Shop, as launched Tuesday, has been in testing since November.
The platform has previously backed down from efforts to push e-commerce. TikTok piloted a shopping experience in partnership with Shopify in 2021 that did not stick, and reports circulated in 2022 that TikTok was giving up altogether on live shopping in the United States and Europe after struggling to connect with consumers.
The move to once again revitalize e-retail efforts in the United States comes as the app faces increasing scrutiny from lawmakers. Some critics and a growing number of US lawmakers on both sides of the aisle view TikTok as a national security threat, since it is owned by China-based company ByteDance. Some US officials have expressed fears that the Chinese government could spy on US data via TikTok, though there is so far no evidence that the Chinese government has ever accessed personal information of US-based TikTok users.
The US government and 17 states are suing Amazon in a landmark monopoly case reflecting years of allegations that the e-commerce giant abused its economic dominance and harmed fair competition.
The groundbreaking lawsuit by the Federal Trade Commission and 17 attorneys general marks the US government’s sharpest attack yet against Amazon, a company that started off selling books on the internet but has since become known as “the everything store,” expanding into selling a vast range of consumer products, creating a globe-spanning logistics network and becoming a powerhouse in other technologies such as cloud computing.
The complaint alleges Amazon unfairly promotes its own platform and services at the expense of third-party sellers who rely on the company’s e-commerce marketplace for distribution.
For example, according to the FTC, Amazon has harmed competition by requiring sellers on its platform to purchase Amazon’s in-house logistics services in order to secure the best seller benefits, referred to as “Prime” eligibility. It also claims the company anticompetitively forces sellers to list their products on Amazon at the lowest prices anywhere on the web, instead of allowing sellers to offer their products at competing marketplaces for a lower price.
That practice is already the subject of a separate lawsuit targeting Amazon filed by California’s attorney general last year.
Because of Amazon’s dominance in e-commerce, sellers have little option but to accept Amazon’s terms, the FTC alleges, resulting in higher prices for consumers and a worse consumer experience. Amazon also ranks its own products in marketplace search results higher than those sold by third parties, the FTC said.
Amazon is “squarely focused on preventing anyone else from gaining that same critical mass of customers,” FTC Chair Lina Khan told reporters Tuesday. “This complaint reflects the cutting edge and best thinking on how competition occurs in digital markets and, similarly, the tactics that Amazon has used to suffocate rivals, deprive them of oxygen, and really leave a stunted landscape in its wake.”
The states involved in the case are Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin.
The complaint was filed in the US District Court for the Western District of Washington, and seeks a court order blocking Amazon from engaging in the allegedly anticompetitive behavior. Khan declined to say Tuesday whether the agency will be seeking a breakup of the company, saying the case is currently focused on proving Amazon’s liability under federal antitrust law.
The suit makes Amazon the third tech giant after Google and Meta to be hit with sweeping US government allegations that the company spent years violating federal antitrust laws, reflecting policymakers’ growing worldwide hostility toward Big Tech that intensified after 2016. The litigation could take years to play out. But just as Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his spectacular wealth have inspired critics to draw comparisons to America’s Gilded Age, so may the FTC lawsuit come to symbolize a modern repeat of the antitrust crackdown of the early 20th century.
In a release, Khan accused Amazon of using “punitive and coercive tactics” to preserve an illegal monopoly.
“Amazon is now exploiting its monopoly power to enrich itself while raising prices and degrading service for the tens of millions of American families who shop on its platform and the hundreds of thousands of businesses that rely on Amazon to reach them,” Khan said. “Today’s lawsuit seeks to hold Amazon to account for these monopolistic practices and restore the lost promise of free and fair competition.”
“Today’s suit makes clear the FTC’s focus has radically departed from its mission of protecting consumers and competition. The practices the FTC is challenging have helped to spur competition and innovation across the retail industry, and have produced greater selection, lower prices, and faster delivery speeds for Amazon customers and greater opportunity for the many businesses that sell in Amazon’s store,”said David Zapolsky, Amazon’s Senior Vice President of Global Public policy and General Counsel. “If the FTC gets its way, the result would be fewer products to choose from, higher prices, slower deliveries for consumers, and reduced options for small businesses—the opposite of what antitrust law is designed to do. The lawsuit filed by the FTC today is wrong on the facts and the law, and we look forward to making that case in court.”
For years, Amazon’s critics including US lawmakers, European regulators, third-party sellers, consumer advocacy groups and more have accused the company of everything from mistreating its workers to forcing its third-party sellers to accept anticompetitive terms. Amazon has unfairly used sellers’ own commercial data against them, opponents have said, so it can figure out what products Amazon should sell itself. And the fact that Amazon competes with sellers on the very same marketplace it controls represents a conflict of interest that should be considered illegal, many of Amazon’s critics have said.
The lawsuit represents a watershed moment in Khan’s career. She is widely credited with kickstarting antitrust scrutiny of Amazon in the United States with a seminal law paper in 2017. She later helped lead a congressional investigation into the tech industry’s alleged competition abuses, detailing in a 450-page report how Amazon — as well as Apple, Google and Meta — enjoy “monopoly power” and that there is “significant evidence” to show that the companies’ anticompetitive conduct has hindered innovation, reduced consumer choice and weakened democracy.
The investigation led to a raft of legislative proposals aimed at reining in the companies, but the most significant ones have stalled under a barrage of industry lobbying and decisions by congressional leaders not to bring the bills up for a final vote.
Lawmakers’ inaction has left it to antitrust enforcers to police the tech industry’s alleged harms to competition. In 2021, President Joe Biden stunned many in Washington when he tapped Khan not only to serve on the FTC but to lead the agency, sending a signal that he supported tough antitrust oversight.
Since then Khan has taken an aggressive enforcement posture, particularly toward the tech industry. Under her watch, the FTC has sued to block numerous tech acquisitions, most notably Microsoft’s $69 billion deal to acquire video game publisher Activision Blizzard. It has moved to restrict how companies may collect and use consumers’ personal information, and warned them of the risks of generative artificial intelligence.
Throughout, the FTC has scrutinized Amazon — suing the company in June for allegedly tricking millions of consumers into signing up for Amazon Prime and reaching multimillion-dollar settlements in May with the company over alleged privacy violations linked to Amazon’s smart home devices.
But the latest suit against Amazon may rank as the most significant of all, because it drives at the heart of Amazon’s e-commerce business and focuses on some of the most persistent criticisms of the company. In a sign of how threatening Amazon perceived Khan’s ascent to be, the company in 2021 called for her recusal from all cases involving the tech giant.
Khan has resisted those calls. On Tuesday, the FTC said it held a unanimous 3-0 vote authorizing the lawsuit; Khan was among those voting to proceed.
Indonesia has banned e-commerce transactions on social media platforms, the trade minister said on Wednesday, in a blow to short video app TikTok, which is doubling down on Southeast Asia’s biggest economy to boost its e-commerce business.
The government said the move, which takes effect immediately, is aimed at protecting offline merchants and marketplaces, adding that predatory pricing on social media platforms is threatening small and medium-sized enterprises.
The move comes just three months after TikTok pledged to invest billion of dollars in Southeast Asia, mainly in Indonesia, over the next few years in a major push to build its e-commerce platform TikTok Shop.
TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, has 125 million active monthly users in Indonesia and has been looking to translate the large user base into a major e-commerce revenue source.
A TikTok Indonesia spokesperson said it would pursue a constructive path forward and was “deeply concerned” with the announcement, “particularly how it would impact the livelihoods of the 6 million” local sellers active on TikTok Shop.
Indonesia Trade Minister Zulkifli Hasan on Wednesday told reporters that the regulation is intended to ensure “fair and just” business competition, adding that it was also intended to ensure data protection of users.
He warned of letting social media become an e-commerce platform, shop and bank all at the same time.
The new regulation also requires e-commerce platforms in Indonesia to set a minimum price of $100 for certain items that are directly purchased from abroad, according to the regulation document reviewed by Reuters, and that all products offered should meet local standards.
Zulkifli said TikTok had one week to comply with the regulation or face the threat of closure. Indonesia Deputy Trade Minister Jerry Sambuaga earlier this month named TikTok’s live streaming features as an example of people selling goods on social media.
Research firm BMI said TikTok would be the only business affected by the transaction ban and the move was unlikely to harm the digital marketplace industry’s growth.
Indonesia’s e-commerce market is dominated by the likes of homegrown tech firm GoTo’s Tokopedia, Sea’s Shopee and Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba’s Lazada.
E-commerce transactions in Indonesia amounted to nearly $52 billion last year and of that, 5% took place on TikTok, according to data from consultancy Momentum Works.
Indonesia is among the few markets where TikTok has launched TikTok Shop, as it seeks to leverage its large user base in the country.
Its 125 million active monthly users in Indonesia is almost on par with its user figures for Europe and behind US users of more than 150 million. TikTok launched an online shopping service in the United States earlier this month.
Reactions from retailers were mixed.
Fahmi Ridho, a vendor selling clothes on TikTok, said the platform was a way for stores to recover from the blow dealt by the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Sales don’t have to be necessarily through [brick and mortar] shops, you can do it online or wherever,” he said “Everything will still have a portion.”
But Edri, who goes by one name only and sells clothes at a major wholesale market in Jakarta, agreed with the regulation and stressed that there should be limits on items sold online.
What’s the dress code of Summer 2023? Call it TikTok-approved coastal cowgirl aesthetic. Or, in other words, the Taylor Swift look.
With the superstar entertainer pulling in record-breaking crowds for “The Eras Tour,” retailers across the country are marketing to “Swifties,” aggressively and inventively, as her 52-stadium tour hits their towns.
Women’s clothing-company founder Taylor Johnson said that, from one Taylor to another, she owes Swift a big “Thank You” for going on tour again and making sparkly sequined dresses, cowboy hats and rhinestone boots massively saleable. “This has become a wild year already for us because of Taylor Swift,” said Johnson, CEO of Hazel & Olive.
One of their dresses in particular, called aThe Eras Sequin Fringe Dress, which retails for $129, is on fire. “Our phones have been blowing up and we’ve been getting hundreds of calls and Instagram messages about that dress,” she said.
Francesca’s, a fashion chain with 454 boutiques nationwide, expected Swift’s tour to have an impact. But ruffle, prairie, babydoll and bow-back style dresses get a 30% jump in sales at the stores when Swift is in town, said Leanne Neale, vice president of concept and creative with the Houston company.
Trendy clothing chain Altar’d State has proactively gone all-in on Swift mania by curating looks from its collection for every one of the Swift albums. “Enter your Era,” it invites.
Swift’s “The Eras Tour,” was infamous before it even began. The concerts were so wildly anticipated that ticket presale on Ticketmaster became a highly publicizeddebacle. Ticketmaster blamed extraordinary demand for crashing its website and eventually canceled ticket sales to the public. Many were left without a ticket even after purchase.
The mess drew the ire of lawmakers, leading to a Justice Department investigation and a congressional hearing.
Ticketmaster apologized to Swift and her fans for the “terrible experience” and said it would work to “shore up our tech for the new bar that has been set by demand” for Swift’s tour.
That was too little too late for some fans who took Ticketmaster (and parent company Live Nation) to court.
But the show must go on, and it did, with Swift headed to New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium (seating capacity: 82,500) for shows into and over the Memorial Day weekend.
At Altar’d State, “We’ve never prepped stores this way but we’re calling it Taylor week,” said Callie Lewis, chief merchandising officer. Mannequins wearing Swift-inspired looks are placed front and center in their stores along with other concert-friendly merchandise such as clear handbags that meet security protocols at concert venues.
What’s moving? Everything from sundresses and metallic boots to romantic, breezy long dresses, tulle tops, daring red gowns and lots and lots and lots of fringe. “We can’t restock fast enough,” said Lewis. Hot sellers include lavender-colored clothing (inspired by Swift’s song Lavender Haze.)
Swift isn’t the only hot concert tour influencing the fashion business in 2023. Neale at francesca’s said she’s looking to Beyonce’s “Renaissance” tour firing up demand for concertwear, too. Francesca’s stores, she said will also curate looks that appeal to the BeyHive.
Retailer Johnson admits that all this mad dash for product is a good problem to have, given that as much as 80% of Hazel & Olive’s monthly orders currently are for concert looks. (She declined to disclose her annual sales but said she operates a multimillion-dollar-a-year small business.
Johnson said she’s been ordering the maximum quantity of the most in-demand concert styles from her supplier, but even that’s not enough, lately.
“As soon as I get more inventory in, it sells outs quickly,” she said, adding that she’s even flying in merchandise at a higher cost from her suppliers in China, instead of shipping it via sea as she usually does, in order to speed up delivery. As for the Taylor Swift bump to business, Johnson said she’s grateful for it.
“This is crazy. I need Taylor Swift to go on concert year-round because we’re now on pace to have our biggest sales year yet,” she said.
When Julia Thomas woke up at her home in Cleveland last Saturday, she spontaneously decided to drive 15 hours to the Taylor Swift concert that night in Nashville, picking up her sister in Cincinnati along the way. But they were missing one thing: tickets.
Like so many Swift fans, shecouldn’t get tickets on Ticketmaster when they went on sale last fall, nor could she afford the four-figureprice tag listed for them on resale sites. About halfway through the drive, however, her sister found $350 floor seats after refreshing various Swift-focused Twitter accounts: Ticketmaster had just dropped a handful of last-minute tickets at face value on its website.
“We seriously just got super lucky,” she told CNN. “We made it to Nashville with about an hour to spare before the concert started.”
Thomas is one of many devoted fans whoclosely monitor a mix of Twitter accounts dedicated to alerting fans whenTicketmaster releases a new batch of Swifttickets after the initial sale.
Ticket drops are not new. They’re ostensibly due to additional seats being added to a venue, or if tickets are returned. But these drops have become an obsession among Swift’s most devoted fans, who are struggling to find tickets for the artist in the face of Ticketmaster’s broader ticketing snafus.
Ticketmaster has been under scrutiny for fumbling the online sales to the mega-star’s latest tour, in an era where it already completely dominates the live event industry, leaving few, if any, alternatives. In November, “Verified Fans” were sent a presale code — but when sales began, heavy demand snarled the website and millions of Swifties could not get their hands on a ticket. Presale tickets for Capital One card holders brought similar frustration — and then Ticketmaster canceled sales to the general public, citing “extraordinarily high demand” and “insufficient remaining ticket inventory.”
In testimony before Congress, Ticketmaster parent company Live Nation President and CFO Joe Berchtold partly blamed the ticketing incident on bots. He alsoemphasized that Ticketmaster does not set ticket prices, does not determine the number of tickets put up for sale and that “in most cases, venues set service and ticketing fees,” not Ticketmaster.
Ticketmaster and Live Nation arecurrently face a lawsuit from Swift fans across the country for “unlawful conduct,” with the plaintiffs claiming the ticketing giant violated antitrust laws, among others. A preliminary hearing was held in March; Ticketmaster has denied the allegations.
Millions of fans are still unable to buy tickets. In recent weeks, however, Ticketmaster has been sending out more Verified Fan codes to people who were originally selected from the pre-sale to purchase from leftover tickets. For people without codes, Ticketmaster is also doing routine ticket drops ahead of shows.
It’s not unusual, however, that thousands of fans are trying to secure the same tickets at the same time. Sometimes the seats are purchased by bots and scalpers, and reposted to third-party sites like StubHub within minutes.
Ticketmaster did not respond to a request for comment about its ticket drops.
But that’s not deterring Swift fans. Some are spending hours searching for tickets online and driving long distances to concert venues without a ticket in hand, even if it risks ending in heartbreak.
Molly Ramsey, an 18-year-old fan from Bristol, Tennessee, said she recently stumbled across the Twitter account @erastourticks, which often tweets about Ticketmaster’s drops. “My family [last weekend] took the gamble to drive down the 5 hours to Nashville to see if we could get face value tickets,” she said.
After nearly nine hours of refreshing Ticketmaster, she secured four tickets right before the show started. “We were sitting outside of the stadium while the openers were playing, but as soon as our payment went through, it was an out-of-body experience,” she said. “My sister started screaming and dancing.”
In a nod to Swift’s hit song “Anti-Hero” and the rush to find drop tickets, the Twitter account – which has about 22,000 followers – recently tweeted: “It must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero aka @Ticketmaster.”
A similar site, @concertleaks, has been connecting its 62,000 followers to last-minute Swift tickets. The account was originally set up years ago to post concert setlists, merchandise, and tickets for various artists, but has evolved to help connect followers with ticket drops, too.
AnotherTwitter account called @ErasTourResell, which has 120,000 followers, has gained significant traction working with resellers who want to sell their tickets at face value. The account is run by longtime friends Courtney Johnston, Channette Garay and Angel Richards. The trio of twenty-somethings aim to make Swift tickets as accessible to fans as possible without them overpaying or getting scammed.
“So far we’ve posted somewhere between 2,700 and 3,000 tickets, all for face value,” the trio said in a DM conversation on Twitter. “It’s truly so rewarding seeing these tickets go to real fans for face value when the resale market has insane prices with people making three times the profit. It’s also been amazing to meet people who follow the account at shows, especially if the only reason they were even able to attend was through our account.”
They spend hours, in between working and going to school, sifting through daily submissions to make sure the tickets are real. The group encourages buyers to ask for video proof of tickets, to pay only via Paypal Goods and Services due to its protection plan and to never pay over the face value. (They also said they don’t make any money off the process, and do it only to help fellow Swifties, but they do have a Ko-Fi account where people can donate funds for food or coffee).
“Surprisingly, the vetting process has gone immensely well and smoothly because by now we know what a sketchy screen recording looks like or what a forged or hacked email can look like,” the group said. “It’s all about being able to catch the super small details – what color an image is supposed to look like, what link is clickable, where that link has to take you, what message is supposed to pop up at any certain point.”
But getting these tickets isn’t easy. After an alert for tickets is posted to their Twitter page, many users say they never hear back from sellers, and it’s unclear how they select a buyer from the hundreds of fans who reach out to them.
“It has definitely gotten harder with our amount of followers increasing,” the friends behind @ErasTourResell told CNN. “Some [sellers pick] based off of the first direct message and mention, and others go for someone with a touching story so it truly varies. Having our notifications on helps as we tend to do a little warning and tease before posting most tickets.”
Beyond Twitter, many fans are turning to sites such as Reddit, including the R/Taylor Swift page, for play-by-play details on Ticketmaster drops. Some say they’ve spotted them several times throughout the day but most frequently about 30 minutes before a show starts. (Tickets have even appeared an hour into the show.) Others suggest using Apple Pay to expedite the payment process and avoid losing tickets while typing in credit card information.
Despite these massive efforts, not all fansfind luck online.
Katy Blackman, 33, from Birmingham, Alabama, said she spent all day in a Nashville hotel last weekend refreshing the site. Only once did she manage to get a single ticket into her online shopping cart, but it was gone before she could check out.
Still, she headed to Nissan Stadium that night and stood in the parking lot alongside hundreds of other fans without tickets trying to get in. When the lights dimmed minutes before Swift took the stage, the crowds scattered; she was nearly the only one left, still refreshing Ticketmaster.
“All my searching and combing Ticketmaster and resell sites was worthless,” she said. “But then all of a sudden, a random girl came running up to me truly seconds before she came on and said, “Hey, wanna come in with me?”
The stranger had just scored last-minute tickets and had an extra to sell. “A miracle happened,” Blackman said. “My new friend and I sang every single song. We cried, danced, hugged. It was worth the absolute hell to get there.”
A family of four has become a family of one after a 6-year-old’s parents and brother were fatally shot by a gunman at a Texas outlet mall Saturday, a GoFundMe post by the family’s friends said.
The Houston office of the South Korean Consulate confirmed Monday that three Korean Americans – husband Cho Kyu Song, 37, and wife, Kang Shin Young, 35, as well as one of their children – were killed in the shooting, according to the Dallas Morning News. The child’s name and age were not given.
“Cindy, Kyu and three year old James were among those victims that tragically lost their lives and the family is in deep mourning,” a GoFundMe post read, written by friends of the family, referring to the family by their American names. “After being released from the ICU, their six year old son William is the only surviving member of this horrific event.”
Eight people were shot dead and at least seven others wounded before the gunman was killed by an Allen police officer who was already at the retail center on an unrelated call, police said.
It was one of more than 200 mass shootings in the US so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which like CNN defines a mass shooting as one in which four or more people are shot, not including the shooter. People going about their daily lives in schools, parks, grocery stores and medical buildings in communities big and small must now grapple with the trauma and grief that lingers when the shooting stops.
Here’s what we know so far about those killed in the Texas shooting:
The Cho family was at the mall for a day that should have been “filled with light, love and celebration,” but ended in tragedy, according to the GoFundMe campaign.
William, who just celebrated his birthday, lost his mother, father and younger brother in the shooting, according to the post.
Sisters Daniela and Sofia Mendoza were both elementary school students in the Wylie Independent School District, according to a letter sent to parents by the district.
Daniela was in fourth grade and her sister was in second grade, the letter said. Their mother, Ilda Mendoza, is in the hospital in critical condition.
“Words cannot express the sadness we feel as we grieve the loss of our students,” the letter reads. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the Mendoza family, the families of the victims, and all those affected by this senseless tragedy.”
Cox Elementary School Principal Krista Wilson described the sisters as “rays of sunshine” in the letter.
“Daniela and Sofia will not be forgotten,” the letter read. “Hug your kids, and tell them you love them.”
The school district says it is not announcing the news to the students and is leaving it up to parents to have that conversation with their children. Counseling services are being offered for students, staff and families, the letter said.
“Please hold the Mendoza family close to your heart. We know in times of tragedy, our community rallies around each other, and we will do all we can to support the family and friends of the precious students we lost.”
Christian LaCour was a well-liked security guard at the outlets.
“Christian was a sweet, caring young man who was loved greatly by our family,” his sister Brianna Smith told CNN.
The 20-year-old was “the kind of person who would just walk into the store and everyone in the room would light up because he was there,” said Max Weiss, a mall store employee.
“Every time he was in the store, it felt safer,” Weiss added. “He brought laughter and joy and always knew what to say.”
Aishwarya Thatikonda was killed while visiting the mall with a friend, CNN affiliate WFAA reported.
Thatikonda was a few days away from turning 28, Ashok Kolla, a spokesperson with the Telugu Association of North America (TANA) told CNN. The organization helps the Telugu community in the United States.
Family and friends described Thatikonda as a loving and hard-working person who was respected by co-workers, Kolla said.
Thatikonda worked as an engineer, a family representative told WFAA.
She moved to the United States about five years ago to pursue her master’s degree, Kolla said. She graduated with that degree from Eastern Michigan University in 2020.
“We were deeply saddened to learn this morning that an Eastern Michigan University graduate, Aishwarya Thatikonda, was among those killed in Saturday’s shooting at a mall outside of Dallas, Texas,” the university said in a statement. “Aishwarya graduated from Eastern in Dec. 2020 with a Master of Science in construction management.”
“As the nation has to once again grapple with a senseless act of gun violence, we share our condolences with Aishwarya’s family and friends,” the school added. “She will forever be remembered as a strong Eastern Michigan University Eagle.”
Thatikonda lived in McKinney, but her family is mourning her loss from their home in India.
The family plans to have her body sent to India, Kolla said.
CNN has reached out to the consulate general of India in Houston for more information.
In a statement released Monday, the Texas Department of Public Safety also identified 32-year-old Elio Cumana-Rivas as a victim in the massacre.
Authorities in a suburb of Dallas are responding to a shooting at an outlet mall, with ATF personnel on the scene at Allen Premium Outlets.
There is at least one confirmed shooter who is being reported as deceased on the ground, a law enforcement source told CNN.
There is a search for a possible second gunman, according to the source, based on descriptions from witnesses, although the involvement of a second shooter is not confirmed.
Police believe they have identified the vehicle of the deceased suspect, which is being examined by the bomb squad as a precaution, the source says.
The Dallas field office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives tweeted Saturday afternoon that personnel were responding to an active shooter incident at the mall.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called it an “unspeakable tragedy,” saying in a statement that “our hearts are with the people of Allen, Texas.”
Jaynal Pervez told CNN affiliate KTVT that he arrived at the mall after his daughter, who was inside, called to inform him about a shooting.
“We saw the police outside the door, and they told us we had to go, and that they are still looking for the person,” Pervez said. “There’s no more safe places. I don’t know what to do.”
Police in Allen asked residents to avoid the area.
Tony Wright, an Allen resident whose home backs up to the Allen Premium Outlets, said his family thought they heard construction before they realized it was gunshots.
Wright said he was driving away from his house at the time and didn’t hear the gunshots himself, but his family called him moments later, “freaking out,” and saying they heard gunfire.
Initially, however, it wasn’t clear.
“Everyone thought it was hammering,” he said of the noise of gunfire that sounded like construction.
But he said once they saw people fleeing the outlet mall, the family locked the doors and hunkered down.
Bed Bath & Beyond, the store for seemingly everything in your home during the 1990s and 2000s, filed for bankruptcy on Sunday. The company said it would sell off its merchandise and then go out of business.
“Thank you to all of our loyal customers. We have made the difficult decision to begin winding down our operations,” a statement at the top of the company’s website said Sunday morning.
The company’s 360 Bed Bath & Beyond locations, along with its 120 buybuy BABY stores, will remain open for now, as will their websites. But store closing sales will begin Wednesday, and the company will liquidate all its inventory.
Bed Bath & Beyond had been a crown jewel of the era of so-called “category killers” — chains that dominated a category of retail, such as Toys “R” Us, Circuit City and Sports Authority. Those companies, too, ultimately filed for bankruptcy as shoppers turned away from huge specialty stores in favor of online options like Amazon.
Bed Bath & Beyond became known for pots and pans, towels and bedding stacked from the floor to the ceiling at its cavernous stores — and for its ubiquitous 20%-off coupons. The blue-and-white coupons became something of a pop culture symbol, and millions of Americans wound up stashing them away in their cars, closets and basements.
The company said customers will have Sunday, Monday and Tuesday to use their remaining 20%-off coupons. The company will stop accepting them Wednesday. Instead, Bed Bath & Beyond expects to offer “deep discounts” on its products as part of its going-out-of-business sales.
The retailer attracted a broad range of customers by selling name brands at cut-rate prices. Brands coveted a spot on Bed Bath & Beyond’s shelves, knowing it would lead to big sales. Plus, the open-store layout encouraged impulse buying: Shoppers would come in to buy new dishes and walk out with pillows, towels and other items.
Stores were a fixture for shoppers around the winter holidays and during the back-to-school and college seasons, and Bed Bath & Beyond also had a strong baby and wedding registry business.
But the New Jersey-based company has been slow to respond to shopping changes and struggled to entice customers who had moved on to Amazon, Target and other chains.
In its bankruptcy filing, Bed Bath & Beyond said it had $5.2 billion in debt and assets of just $4.4 billion. It secured $240 million in financing Sunday to stay afloat just long enough to close its stores and wind down its operations.
The company encouraged shoppers to seek out its discounted merchandise later this week. Items purchased before Wednesday can be returned until May 24, but all sales after Wednesday will be final. The store will stop accepting gift cards on May 8.
Founded in 1971 by Warren Eisenberg and Leonard Feinstein, two veterans of the discount retail industry in Springfield, New Jersey, the chain of small linen and bath stores — then called Bed ‘n Bath — first grew around the northeast and in California selling designer bedding, a new trend at the time. Unlike department stores, it didn’t rely on sales events to draw in customers.
The company changed its name to Bed Bath & Beyond in 1987 to reflect its expanded merchandise and bigger “superstores.” The company went public in 1992 with 38 stores and around $200 million in sales.
“We had witnessed the department store shakeout and knew that specialty stores were going to be the next wave of retailing,” Feinstein said in 1993. “It was the beginning of the designer approach to linens and housewares and we saw a real window of opportunity.”
By 2000, those figures leapt to 241 stores and $1.1 billion in annual sales. The 1,000th Bed Bath & Beyond store opened in 2009, when the chain had reached $7.8 billion in annual sales.
The company was something of an iconoclast. It spent little on advertising, relying instead on print coupons distributed in weekly newspapers to attract customers.
“Why not just tell the customer that we’ll give you a discount on the item you want — and not the one that we want to put on sale? We’ll mail a coupon, and it will be a lot cheaper,” Eisenberg said in a 2020 New York Times interview.
The chain was known for giving autonomy to store managers to decide which products to stock, allowing them to customize their individual stores, and for shipping products directly to stores instead of a central warehouse.
But as brick-and-mortar began to give way to e-commerce, Bed Bath & Beyond was slow to make the transition — a misstep compounded by the fact that home decor is one of the most commonly bought categories online.
“We missed the boat on the internet,” Eisenberg said in a recent Wall Street Journal interview. (The co-founders are no longer involved with the company.)
Online shopping weakened the allure of Bed Bath & Beyond’s fan-favorite coupons, too, because consumers could find plenty of cheaper alternatives on Amazon or browse a wider selection on sites like Wayfair
(W).
It wasn’t just Amazon and online shopping that sank Bed Bath & Beyond, however.
Walmart
(WMT), Target
(TGT) and Costco
(COST) have grown over the past decade, and they have been able to draw Bed Bath & Beyond customers with lower prices and a wider array of merchandise. Discount chains such as HomeGoods and TJ Maxx have also undercut Bed Bath & Beyond’s prices.
Without the differentiators of the lowest prices or widest selection, Bed Bath & Beyond’s sales stagnated from 2012 to 2019.
Then the pandemic hit in 2020. The company temporarily closed all of its stores while rivals deemed “essential retailers” like Walmart remained open. Sales sank 17% in 2020 and 15% in 2021.
What’s more, Bed Bath & Beyond has rotated through several different executives and turnaround strategies in recent years.
Former Target executive Mark Tritton took the helm in 2019 with backing from investors and a bold new strategy. He scaled back coupons and inventory from national brands in favor of Bed Bath & Beyond’s own private-label brands.
But this change alienated customers who were loyal to big brands. The company also fell behind on payments to vendors, and stores did not have enough merchandise to stock shelves. Tritton stepped down as CEO in 2022.
Bed Bath & Beyond
(BBBY) has been teetering on the brink of bankruptcy for months.
In February, it was able to stave off bankruptcy by completing a complex stock offering that gave it both an immediate injection of cash and a pledge for more funding in the future to pay down its debt. That offering was backed by private equity group Hudson Bay Capital.
But Bed Bath & Beyond last month said it terminated the deal with Hudson Bay Capital for future funding and was turning to the public market to try to raise funds.
The company has also been shrinking to save money. It said earlier this year it would close around 400 locations, but would keep open profitable stores in key markets.
And the company tried to save money by not paying severance to some laid-off workers at closing stores.
Bed Bath & Beyond laid off 1,295 workers in New Jersey this month, just days before a new state law kicked in that mandates severance pay — equal to one week of pay for each year of employment — for workers who lose their job.
All these moves were not enough to keep the once-dominant chain out of bankruptcy, however.
AndBed Bath & Beyond is the latest retail chain to file for bankruptcy this year. Bankruptcies are piling up in the retail sector as interest rates go up and discretionary spending slows down.
David’s Bridal, Party City, Tuesday Morning, mattress manufacturer Serta Simmons and Independent Pet Partners, a pet store retailer, have filed for bankruptcy in recent weeks.
Two teenage cheerleaders were shot after one said she mistook the suspect’s vehicle for her own in a supermarket parking lot near Texas’ capital – making this at least the third incident this week in which young people who’d made an apparent mistake were met with gunfire.
Authorities arrested Pedro Tello Rodriguez Jr., 25, the man they say shot the two teens. He was taken into custody early Tuesday, the Elgin Police Department said in a news release later that morning.
According to a probable cause document, Tello is accused of deadly conduct with a firearm, a third-degree felony. He is being held on a $500,000 bond. It was not immediately clear whether he has an attorney.
Officers responding just after midnight Tuesday to an H-E-B supermarket parking lot found two people in a vehicle who’d been struck by bullets, police said, citing preliminary reports. One with serious injuries was rushed by helicopter to a hospital and was in critical condition, while the other was treated at the scene, the release said.
The latter girl had gotten out of a friend’s car and opened the door to a vehicle she thought was hers, only to find a man sitting in the passenger seat, she said during a livestreamed prayer vigil Tuesday night at her cheer team’s gym, CNN affiliate KTRK reported.
Heather Roth said she was trying to apologize to the man when he got out of the passenger door.
“He just threw his hands up, and then he pulled out a gun and he just started shooting at all of us,” Roth said, fighting tears.
Lynne Shearer, managing partner of the Woodlands Elite Cheer Company, told CNN the Roth and fellow cheerleader Payton Washington fled immediately in their car.
“As soon as they saw the gun, they said go and they drove and they went about two miles down the road,” Shearer told CNN. “And that’s when they realized that Payton was seriously hurt and they pulled over once they realized that guy wasn’t following them because Payton was … throwing up blood at that point. So they, that’s when they called 911.”
Washington was shot twice and badly injured, according to a GoFundMe spearheaded by her cheerleading team, the Woodlands Elite Generals. Washington is stable and recovering in the ICU, according to the team.
Roth was struck by a bullet but was treated and released at the scene, Shearer said.
Washington is “doing well today” after suffering from a ruptured spleen, which was removed, and she has damage to her pancreas and diaphragm, Shearer said Wednesday.
“Her stomach is not closed up yet and they are keeping her on heavy antibiotics for at least 48 hours to hopefully fight off infection,” she said. “Once they are sure there is no infection, they will go back in and finish up any issues and close her up.”
In another interview with CNN, Shearer said Washington should make a full recovery and has been FaceTiming with her friends.
Roth and Washington are from the Austin and Round Rock area and were commuting in a carpool to a cheerleading gym in Oak Ridge North, a Houston suburb, three times a week.
The commute is about 300 miles round trip – a commute Washington has been doing for eight years, Shearer said.
Roth is in college, while the other three girls in the vehicle, including Washington, are in high school.
Washington, a senior who had committed to Baylor University’s Acrobatics and Tumbling team, was born with only one lung and “has surpassed many obstacles to rise to the very top of her sport,” Shearer said.
“Payton is a strong young lady; if you know her, you know that about her,” Baylor head acrobatics and tumbling coach Felecia Mulkey told CNN. “I have no doubt she’s going to get through this.”
After visiting Roth on Tuesday, Mulkey said all things considered, she looked great and is making good progress – but acknowledged there’s still a long way to go on her path to recovery.
Mulkey described Roth as an “amazing athlete but a better human.”
“I know mental wounds also leave scars,” she said. “We want to lift up the athletes and their families during this difficult time. We love Payton and we wish her well as she recovers.”
Shearer said her team is busy still trying to prepare for the World Championships this weekend in Orlando, which Roth still plans to compete in.
Tuesday’s shooting was yet another case this week in which young people were shot after apparently going to the wrong place, including a 16-year-old struck in the head after ringing the wrong doorbell in Kansas City and a 20-year-old killed by the owner of a home whose driveway she’d inadvertently turned into.
The United States is the only nation with more civilian guns than people, with about 120 guns for every 100 Americans, according to the Small Arms Survey. Elgin is a city of some 10,000 people about a half-hour drive east of Austin.
A supermarket manager witnessed the incident, and police have surveillance footage from the parking lot that shows the license plate on the suspect’s car, police said, according to the probable cause affidavit.
“Elgin Detectives contacted Pedro Tello at the residence. Pedro Tello was still wearing the clothing that was observed by Elgin Detectives in the surveillance footage,” the affidavit states.
Four Woodland Elite Cheer athletes were “involved in a horrific incident” on their way home from practice Monday night, the cheerleading and tumbling company said in a Facebook post.
CEO Tim Cook personally welcomed customers to the new Apple store in Mumbai as the tech company opens its first retail stores in India. CNN’s Vedika Sud reports.
A line of Chicago mayors heavily courted Walmart over the last two decades, brushing aside community protests. And Walmart welcomed the opportunity to show cities it could be a strong corporate partner.
But now, Walmart is pulling back from Chicago.
The largest retailer in the country announced plans this week to close four of its eight stores in the city, citing growing financial losses. Three are in predominantly Black and low-income neighborhoods, and their closures with little warning mean residents — including elderly citizens and people without reliable transportation — will have to travel further to buy groceries and pick up their medications.
“These stores lose tens of millions of dollars a year, and their annual losses nearly doubled in just the last five years,” Walmart said. Despite years of different strategies, the company said, it did not see a route to profitability for these stores. Walmart, which made $20.6 billion in 2022, did not specify why losses were growing in Chicago.
City leaders “used a lot of political capital and their trust were questioned, Now it’s kind of like, ‘I told you so,’” said Chicago Alderman-Elect Ronnie Mosley, who will represent a Chicago ward where one of the Walmarts is set to close. His predecessor, who is retiring, was a major proponent of drawing Walmart to Chicago.
Mayors and key political leaders had pushed to draw Walmart, despite protests from small businesses, labor groups and community activists. Critics pointed to studies that suggested a Walmart presence could push out mom-and-pop stores and drive down wages, as it had in smaller towns.
But, at the time, officials argued opening Walmarts would provide jobs, economic development and convenient places to shop for affordable groceries and pharmacy services in some of the city’s low-income communities.
Meanwhile Walmart, which rose mainly in rural and suburban areas, also fought hard to enter Chicago. Walmart saw it as a twofold opportunity: broaden its customer base while proving to skeptical officials in other cities that it was a strong corporate partner.
The closures are another example of the shortcomings of local governments and even national political leaders betting on leading chains to provide key public services and fill gaps.
If government couldn’t provide for a populace in desperate need of jobs and fresh foods, the thinking went, for-profit corporations would.
But in Chicago, that’s not what happened. A 2012 study of Walmart’s impact in Chicago found businesses closer to Walmart were significantly more likely to close than similar businesses farther away — and the number of jobs lost by nearby retail competitors essentially offset the number of jobs created at the new Walmart stores.
This is a particular issue in predominantly minority, low-income areas that experience economic neglect, and other chains have recently shuttered stores in these areas as well.
Unlike local government, which is theoretically accountable to voters, companies answer onlyto their shareholders and don’t have an obligation to stay in communities if they aren’t making a profit.
Whether it’s handing over responsibility for providing public bathrooms to Starbucks and McDonald’s or vaccines and basic health services to CVS and Walgreens, the public is left vulnerable when these companies’ business priorities change or they close locations.
“We have asked business to solve problems that we don’t want government to solve anymore,” said Bryant Simon, a professor of history at Temple University who studies the role of Corporate America and government. “We’re happy to have them do it and then shocked when they act like a business again.”
A similar strategy to rely on national chains to help remedy so-called “food deserts” was a focus on the national level during the Obama administration. It too fell short.
Walmart, Walgreens
(WBA), SuperValu and other store executives joined Michelle Obama at the White House in 2011 to announce a pledge to open a combined 1,500 stores in communities that have limited access to nutritious food by 2016.
But that effort stalled. The Associated Press found in 2015 that leading chains built just 250 new supermarkets in these areas.
“The assumption there is a single player in the nation that will work in every market is proving to not be true,” said Liz Abunaw, who founded Forty Acres Fresh Market, a startup grocer, in response to the lack of fresh food options on Chicago’s West Side. “Even in Chicago, the solutions differ by neighborhood.”
Placing a big chain in the middle of a struggling neighborhood is not an effective strategy alone, she said, and more holistic solutions are needed, including improving housing, jobs and public transportation: “It’s not one thing. All of those things go together.”
There also can be unintended consequences to chains opening in neighborhoods. Companies sometimes open, small retailers close – and then the chain closes, leaving a bigger void in some cases than when it first came in.
“The idea that Walmart did the city a great favor by moving in is highly debatable,” said David Merriman, a professor of public policy, management and analytics at the University of Illinois Chicago and co-author of the study of Walmart’s presence in Chicago.
Instead of relying on large companies to strengthen local economies, some experts say, another solution could be designing policies that better support smaller, family-owned supermarkets, co-operatives, and farmers’ markets such as Yellow Banana and ChiFresh Kitchen in Chicago.
“Their loss is one of the main reasons that communities lack grocery stores and other basic retail in the first place,” Abunaw said.
Despite stiff resistance from unions, grassroots groups and some local leaders in Chicago, Walmart has been embraced by the city’s last three mayors as an economic development model.
In 2006, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley issued a rare veto to override a City Council bill that required big-box stores such as Walmart to pay workers a $10 minimum wage. In 2013, Mayor Rahm Emanuel cut the ribbon on a new Walmart in an underserved neighborhood, saying it was “another example of a company seeing an alignment of what is good for their bottom line with what is good for our neighborhoods.”
In 2020, Mayor Lori Lightfoot held a press conference with Walmart CEO Doug McMillon to announce the company would expand its investment in the city following local and national protests over George Floyd’s murder by police.
But the company struggled in Chicago. Its mammoth superstores, which are designed for people to drive to and make big shopping trips, have been less suited for city residents who tend to make smaller but more frequent trips to supermarkets.
Walmart tried opening smaller stores, known as neighborhood markets, that serve mostly groceries — but these lower profit margins than other merchandise like electronics or clothing. Walmart is closing neighborhood markets around the country, and three of the four stores closing in Chicago fall into that category.
In Chicago, Walmart is closing in both low-income and high-income areas, a sign that it’s struggling across the city. But it’s the stores in low-income areas that will feel the loss most.
“We are in an area where CVS and Walgreens have closed,” Alderman-Elect Mosley said. “Walmart has become the de-facto” store and the closure is “traumatizing.”
“Walmart is leaving and they may be doing what’s best for them,” he said. “Now I have to figure out with our community what’s best for us.”
Walmart’s chief merchandising officer for its US operations is stepping down from the job as the retailer faces a tougher year ahead, an internal memo shared to US associates Friday said.
Charles Redfield, whose career at Walmart spanned 32 years, will transition on May 1 and remain in an advisory role. In a memo viewed by CNN Business, Walmart U.S. CEO John Furner said Redfield wants to spend more time with his family.
Redfield held his position at the retailer for a little more than a year, beginning in January 2022.
Despite a strong holiday season, Walmart forecast slower sales and profit growth in February. Its strong holiday sales were fueled by groceries. Grocery prices rose 11.8% annually in December, pushing customers toward more affordable options.
However, sales were slower for traditional holiday products like toys, electronics and clothing – a sign that consumers are cutting back on discretionary spending.
Walmart did see an 8.3% sales increase during its latest quarter ended January 31 at US stores open for at least one year. More customers are buying its private label brands and more higher-income households are shopping at its stores, the company said.
“The consumer is still very pressured,” Walmart CFO John Rainey told CNBC. “And if you look at economic indicators, balance sheets are running thinner and savings rates are declining relative to previous periods. And so that’s why we take a pretty cautious outlook on the rest of the year.”
The retail industry in general is expected to face challenges this year after sluggish holiday sales.
Redfield is a Walmart veteran. He began his career as a Sam’s Club cashier while attending the University of Arkansas. He became assistant manager with Sam’s Club and worked his way up the ladder.
“There are merchants, and then there’s our Chief Merchandising Officer Charles Redfield,” CEO John Furner said in a memo viewed by CNN Business. “I could probably stop there and many associates across our businesses and the retail industry would know exactly what I mean.”
Redfield became CMO for Asda, Walmart’s UK subsidiary, in 2010. In 2012, he was named executive vice president of merchandising for Sam’s Club and named executive vice president of food for Walmart U.S. in 2015.
The Wall Street Journal first reported the departure.
Furner said the company will be announcing a new CMO soon.
In a note, Neil Saunders, managing director of consultancy GlobalData, wrote that discounted price for Bonobos “reflects the current weaker outlook across retail, but some is also the result of Walmart not having done much to develop the brand over the past six years.”
Tupperware, an iconic brand that’s woven into the fabric of post World War II America, signaled this week that it could be on its last gasp.
Known the world over for its plastic food storage containers and its sales parties, Florida-based Tupperware warned that the company was running out of cash and needed additional money – soon – to say in operation.
In some ways, the 77-year-old brand is still a titan: It’s, literally, a household name, and its vivid juice- and fruit-colored products are for sale in nearly 70 countries. It pulled in annual sales of $1.3 billion in 2021. But that’s down 18.7% from a year ago.
Last October, in a massive shift in its business model, Tupperware rolled out its containers in brighter hues of red, purple and green onto Target shelves nationwide.
But it may be too little, too late.
Experts say this is what happens when a once-pioneering brand, beloved by families through generations, is unable to adapt to an evolving marketplace, brutal competition and attitudes and needs of younger consumers.
“Tupperware was a disruptor in the market and in households nationwide when its plastic storage containers launched in 1946,” said Venkatesh Shankar, professor of marketing and ecommerce at Texas A&M University’s Mays Business School.
“The company also had tremendous cultural impact. The famous neighborhood house parties where Tupperware products were sold by the host to her family and friends was a new way of marketing, combining socializing with direct sales.”
But while the company reaped the benefits of its innovative approach for years, it ultimately couldn’t keep pace with changing times.
History has shown, said Shankar, that nostalgia usually isn’t enough to sustain legacy brands.
Whether or not Tupperware survives as a business, its rich history will likely endure, said William Keep, professor of marketing at the College of New Jersey School of Business.
“I’ve been married for 50 years and we still have and use our Tupperware from when we married. Tupperware was something people gave as gifts at weddings and baby showers,” said Keep. “Clearly its a brand that focused on two things, quality and for much of its history, women.”
Tupperware is named after Earl Tupper, a chemist in the 1940s who created lightweight, non-breakable plastic containers inspired by the seal-tight design of paint cans. The purpose was to help families save money on costly food waste in the post-war era.
The most significant aspect of the invention was a first-of-its-kind “burping seal.” The older models of Tupperware containers would make a burp-like sound when air was let out from under the lid before it was firmly pressed and closed for an air-tight lock.
But Tupperware products didn’t sell well in stores when they launched, according to the company, because consumers weren’t sure how to use the (back then) white and off-white containers.
That conundrum led to an idea to demonstrate the product, which then evolved into the famous Tupperware house parties.
The practice dove-tailed brilliantly with the rise of post-war suburbia: women had bigger homes, bigger kitchens, more money to spend, more children to feed and more responsibilities to keep house.
Into that climate came Tupperware. Its first milky-white plastic product, the “Wonder Bowl,” cost 39 cents, according to Smithsonian Magazine; the museum has a huge Tupperware collection. Over the years, tangerine orange, baby blue and pink and kiwi green products followed.
Tupperware parties became popular social and marketing events in the 1950s and 60s.
The parties were much more than just a show-and-tell, said Bob Kealing, a Tupperware scholar and author of two books on the brand.
These were glamorous affairs, akin to an afternoon tea party, where women dressed up because the parties were a feminized, soft-sell approach to selling plastic products.
“Women wore beautiful dresses, heels, gloves. They wanted to present an upscale version of themselves because these were also events where women were recruited into the Tupperware sales force,” he said. The parties gained traction also because they were one of the few socially acceptable ways for women to make money at the time.
Tupperware products were the centerpiece of the event, carefully stacked and presented to be shown off. “The parties were designed to be fun social gatherings,” including games and prizes, he said, and the most successful Tupperware saleswomen were sometimes rewarded with diamond rings.
While Tupperware wasn’t the first to pioneer the direct sales model, it did scale it up in size and opportunity for women, said Tracey Deutsch, associate professor, department of history of history at University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts.
Tupperware’s success, said Deutsch also coincided with the expansion of suburbs across the country.
“Not only did women need the space to hold the Tupperware parties but also space in the kitchen to store these containers,” she said. “And it was also dependent on a certain level of household well-being. You needed to have enough food to require these storage containers.”
Brownie Wise was perhaps the most famous Tupperware hostess of them all. Wise, a divorced single mother living in Florida, held her own Tupperware parties in the 1940s and 50s and became a budding entrepreneur. Tupper himself took notice.
He eventually hired Wise as his vice president of marketing, an unprecedented role for women back then.
Kealing, author of “”Life of the Party: The Remarkable Story of How Brownie Wise Built, and Lost, a Tupperware Part Empire,” said Wise became the face of the brand and was very good at it.
“It was great marketing and the media ate it up,” he said. But she was ultimately fired by Tupper in 1957. “Tupper… saw how the brand was becoming more about her,” said Kealing.
Traditionally, parties were the only way you could buy Tupperware. Over time, the parties became ubiquitous both in suburban and city dwellings. As the company grew, its fleet of hostesses ballooned into a global direct sales force of nearly 3 million in 2019.
More recently, the brand was on a quest to grab the attention of Millennials and Gen Zers and become as relevant in their everyday lives as it was for their grandmas and moms.
That meant shedding the throwback to its “Mad Men” era image, and positioning Tupperware products as buzz-worthy, higher quality and more durable than rivals, high-utility and with an environmentally-friendly purpose.
Tupperware had to go beyond parties or sales on its own website and the brief and limited pilot programs it had tried with retailers HomeGoods, Bed Bath and Beyond, plus an earlier pilot attempt at Target itself.
The shift in strategy came too late. “We’ve seen this happen with Toys ‘R’ Us, Twinkie, most recently Bed Bath & Beyond,” said Shankar.
Tupperware, he said, is facing a perfect storm of stiff competition from other brands – Rubbermaid, Glad, Pyrex, Oxo and Ziploc – selling similar products or even disposable versions for less, lack of interest from younger shoppers and lack of exciting new products and strategies to sell them.
“Millennials, and Gen Zers especially probably aren’t aware of its iconic status and really don’t have a reason to give it another chance,” said Shankar.
“In my mind, the company made two critical errors,” said Keep, professor of marketing at the College of New Jersey School of Business.
“With product, it lost ground to competitors”, said Keep. “Tupperware also consciously didn’t walk away from direct selling even as these multilevel marketing strategies stagnated in the 80s and 90s. When it was clear that model was no longer working, the company should have given up on direct sales and sold through retailers.”
Bankruptcy could be a path forward for Tupperware, said John Talbott, Director at the Center for Education and Research in Retail at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business.
“The most valuable thing Tupperware owns is its brand. Like Blockbuster, the Tupperware brand will never go away,” he said. “I suspect it could file for bankruptcy and if there is a buyer for it, Target would be a great option to revive the brand with new designs and a new marketing plan.”
Three people were wounded in a “shooting incident” at a mall outside of Wilmington Saturday evening, according to Delaware State Police.
Multiple law enforcement agencies and other emergency responders are on the scene at Christiana Mall where an investigation is underway, New Castle County Coordinator of Emergency Management Dave Carpenter Jr. told CNN.
“There are currently no public safety concerns at Christiana Mall and the surrounding area. Please continue to avoid the area as DSP gathers more info,” the Delaware State Police tweeted.
Police didn’t provide details on the conditions of the victims, but said they have all been transported to an area hospital for medical treatment.
The Delaware Department of Transportation tweeted that all entrances to the mall are currently closed “due to police activity.”
Authorities set up a reunification site at the north entrance of the mall by the AT&T store, according to police.
No information was available on who opened fire or what led to the shooting.
