Retail Watchers

Don't forget that these companies have been much more profitable than usual over the past 18 months. Probably none of us know what Raley's balance sheet looks like, but there is a decent chance that they have reduced debt or built a bunch of cash over the past 18 months. Or they could have paid a ni...

Just for the record, inflation is a highly complex issue and absolutely cannot be explained using one single factor. This is exacerbated by covid. I'm not breaking any news to say that there is a combination of factors that are probably affecting prices, including but not limited to * Overseas produ...

Calitalian, do tell what advanced education do you have, and what research have you done, that allows you to boil down something as complex as the US economy into one single factor, stated so definitively? Please post your sources. Even Dollar Tree, the last holdout of true dollar stores, is throwin...

And, probably like everywhere else, these Rite Aids are hit and miss. More than a few are in tired strip malls. Our local store looks great and has a very busy pharmacy, but has a lot of empty shelves throughout the store (which is not an oversized former PayLess -- this was a replacement store buil...

Also Corvallis, which has two Bi-Marts with pharmacies (both stores seem to do reasonably well from what I can tell - the only chain discount store competition in town is a small Fred Meyer, and both stores are in good locations) and no Walgreen's stores (almost certainly one of the largest towns in...

You raise an interesting point. Fred Meyer operates in some surprisingly small towns on the Oregon coast -- specifically Brookings and Florence, and to a slightly lesser extent Newport (along with Coos Bay and Warrenton, which serve bigger areas). Towns like Baker City and LaGrande are no smaller th...

I agree with Storewanderer. It is difficult to compare Bi-Mart to anything. The stores are basic without any fancy decor and they don't go overboard on the facade, but they manage to feel clean and maintained inside. They fill the same type of niche as a Pamida or Alco would have, with a large varie...

Bi-Mart just announced that they will be selling all of their remaining pharmacy files to Walgreen's. They already had closed the Portland-area pharmacies. Now they are doing the same thing in the rest of their stores. The files are moving to a nearby Walgreen's where there is a nearby Walgreen's. W...

The sense that Sears/Kmart has been run for cash for 15 years without any intention to build a meaningful business over the long term, regardless of the number of empty boxes and unemployed employees, is really not in dispute and has been discussed here. What I don't understand is their flailing att...

Interestingly, at Fred Meyer tonight, I saw a sticker at a checkstand that said that all change for cash transactions will be loaded onto the loyalty card. I guess that's one way to do it ... I may be getting stores confused but I think at Wal Mart, when you scan the first item, a box pops up on the...