Kesa Down

Kesa Electricals has just published its Statement of Results for the six months to 31st October 2008, and, as expected, it's all a bit grim.

Jean-Noel Labroue said that: "The economic climate across Europe has created very tough trading conditions" for all Kesa's businesses, especially in the UK and Spain. However, he goes on to say, "Darty in France, and our established businesses in Holland, Belgium and the Czech Republic, have demonstrated good resilience, and our start-up operations in Italy and Turkey continued to make further progress".

In the UK, Comet's revenues fell by 7.9 per cent compared with the same period last year, while its retail profits fell from a £10.6mn profit to a loss of £8.1mn.

In Spain, last year's acquisition of Menaje Del Hogar was once described as a "a platform to build a differentiated business" in the Iberian peninsula. But, Kesa's latest statement says that: "The current market conditions are extremely weak, much worse than anticipated, and we do not forsee any improvement in the short term".

Kesa will publish its next trading statement on 20th January 2009.

DSGi in 2012

John Browett, CEO of DSGi, briefed his firm's employees after publishing DSG's half year results on 27th November. It's been reported that he said: "In 2009, we will be in recession for the whole year, and if we're lucky, we will come out of recession in 2010. From the point at which the recession ends, it takes 18 months to the business back to where we started". So that means it won't be until 2012 before DSGi will be back in good shape.

Office Depot Cuts

Office Depot has announced that it is closing 112 'under-performing' retail stores in the USA and a further 12 stores will be closed in 2009 as their leases expire. New store openings for 2009 have been cut in half, down from 40 to 20. Office Depot also plans to close 6 of its 33 distribution centres in the USA.

About 30 per cent of Office Depot's revenues come from outside the USA, so perhaps we will soon hear of further cuts elsewhere in the world...

Apple Store Paris

AppleInsider reports that work may soon start on the first Apple Store in France, close by I. M. Pei's Pyramide du Louvre in Paris. Yet another design statement from Mr Jobs.

Multichannel Tesco

The UK's largest grocer, Tesco, is planning to instal a number of Tesco Direct desks in its Tesco Metro stores, according to a report in Retail Week. It already has over 200 Tesco Direct desks in its larger stores. Tesco also has catalogue stands for its Autumn/Winter catalogues in several of its smaller Express convenience stores.

Tesco has four different store formats in the UK. Express Stores [up to 30,000 sq ft] carry up to 7,000 SKUs. Metro Stores [7,000 - 15,000 sq ft] are town and city centre based. Then there are Superstores [20,000 - 50,000 sq ft], and the Extra format [60,000 sq ft and above]. Tesco also has a trial format called Homeplus [35,000 - 50,000 sq ft]. These are dedicated to non-food lines, including clothing.

Specialists v Generalists #2

And now we learn that Apple's iPhone will be available in Wal-Mart stores before the end of the year...

Specialists v Generalists #1

A recent post from Pali Research gives a good example of what we've known for some time - the generalists will ultimately win over the specialists. Stacey Widlitz at Pali published a note [registration required] last Thursday saying that their No. 1 concern for Best Buy, beyond the macro environment, 'was the potential for share loss to the discounters'. 'Over Thanksgiving weekend', the note goes on to say, 'we noticed both stronger traffic and conversion in Wal-Mart electronics departments relative to the Best Buy stores we visited'.

Apple Store Munich

Germany's first Apple Store opens in Munich on Saturday at 10.00 CET. The AppleInsider site includes pictures of the yet to be unveiled store with a 'wrapper' presumably chosen to mirror the ever-present Bavarian flag...

Attach Rates

HP's Social Computing Lab has found an internal customer. Amongst other things, their research has found that the lengthy lists of accessories that often appear close to the check-out on eCommerce sites aren't performing. Web shoppers simply stop paying attention over time.

So, earlier this year, HP ditched its long lists of add-ons, replacing them with more precise recommendations based on the models created by the Social Computing Lab. According to a recent article in Business Week, the result has been a 30% increase in customers who paired products when they checked out of HP's 'Home and Home Office' web shop.

The American Consumer

Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving Day when US retailers supposedly move from being 'in the red' to being 'in the black'. Chicago-based ShopperTrak tells us that Black Friday 2008 produced retail sales some 3% higher than in 2007, which in turn was 8% higher than 2006.

ShopperTrak warned that while 'Black Friday isn't always the best indicator for holiday season performance, retailers should be cautiously optimistic as deep discounts drove consumers en masse to various retail locations to spend - despite myriad economic pressures over the last two months'.

As some commentators warn, though, this unexpected rise in revenues will almost certainly have come at the expense of profits.