Retail Watchers

Palm Springs is one of the higher volume stores, I'd think--it was a little thinly stocked early in the winter, but by April was looking good. We ended up buying a sectional there (was pretty clearly last-year's line stuck on a boat somewhere from Vietnam) and they more than met their delivery date for a ship-to-store order. Staff was nice and they were getting more consumables stock in to perk up the displays. I enjoy poking through their foods/drinks section for sale and short-dated items...they do a pretty good job of staying on top of dates.

storewanderer wrote: ↑July 27th, 2022, 11:07 pm Cost Plus has a couple levels of stores, the stores that do little volume and the stores that do better volume.

In my area the Reno Cost Plus does better volume and it is merchandised very fully and quite nicely. For a while last year it was pretty empty too but since the ownership change especially the past couple months the store has gotten a ton of new merchandise and feels rather energetic again.

The other two Cost Plus, one in Sparks and one in Carson City, are very low volume, still have very low inventory, and have looked like store closure is coming for years now. But they remain open.

The Camelback Rd store in Phoenix looks better every time I shop there. On my last visit, the merchandise more closely resembled "old" (i.e. pre-BBB) Cost Plus in terms of style and construction.

rwsandiego wrote: ↑July 28th, 2022, 5:31 pm
The Camelback Rd store in Phoenix looks better every time I shop there. On my last visit, the merchandise more closely resembled "old" (i.e. pre-BBB) Cost Plus in terms of style and construction.

I was pretty nervous what was going to happen to World Market after BBB sold it but it actually seems selling World Market has been a really, really good thing for World Market. I am not seeing much in the way of marketing taking place, but the store sure has a better mix than before. It definitely comes off as re-energized and ready for business.

In my opinion World Market should not have been closed during the COVID lockdowns either. They have 25% of floor space dedicated to food. If Target could be open, World Market should have been able to be open too. I think the COVID closures really hurt World Market and they did not pull much traffic at reopening (BBB pulled quite a bit of traffic at reopening) but they seem to finally be getting back on their feet.