Discount Stores

Sales at the nation's biggest retail chains rose above expectations in September as consumers, buoyed by a robust economy, bought school supplies and appliances and stocked up on everything from batteries to canned goods in preparation for East Coast storms.Discount stores and home improvement chains benefited most from Hurricane Floyd, which hit in the middle of last month, retail analysts said. Department stores, however, lost sales -- and failed to catch up later in the month -- when flooding kept shoppers away.

Two boxes will arrive at Hampstead's door next year: One is called Wal-Mart; the other, Sweetheart Cup Co.When the boxes are opened, cars and trucks will stream out and come back in, sometimes as many as 623 more per hour than usual along congested Route 30.Residents fear not so much that things in Hampstead will change, but that they will get worse.The owners of Bob's Variety Store worry that the increased traffic will go beyond the rush-hour crawl that already keeps patrons from their doors.

The Cosmetic Center Inc. ended a once successful but more recently troubled run yesterday, announcing that it will close its remaining 124 stores and its Columbia headquarters by the end of the year.The discount cosmetics retailer, which started as a wholesaler in 1957 and grew to a 260-store chain at its peak, had been in bankruptcy since mid-April. It had announced plans to close 116 stores this year, 73 of which have been shuttered."Based on an increasingly competitive marketplace and the company's financial position ... the board of directors, with management support, thought this was the best alternative," said Wendi Kopsick, a company spokeswoman.

Specialty apparel chains and discount stores saw their sales climb in August, while other retailers blamed sluggish back-to-school sales for disappointing monthly results.Sales at the nation's chain retailers, reported yesterday, rose, on average, a healthy 6.6 percent based on an index of 75 retail chains tracked by Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi Ltd.Among those benefiting most from strong consumer confidence and spending during the first month of back-to-school shopping were mass discounters such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer.

Consumers hunted bargains in the nation's stores in November, favoring discounters and specialty chains over department stores, and leaving winter apparel untouched on the racks amid spring-like weather throughout much of the nation.The nation's biggest retailers, which reported November sales yesterday, just barely met expectations, as gains at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Gap Inc. helped offset sharp declines at department store chains such as Sears, Roebuck and Co."The department stores have taken a bloodbath," said Kurt Barnard, president of Barnard's Retail Trend Report in Upper Montclair, N.J. "The discount stores are doing quite well and thriving at the expense of the department stores."

A surge in post-Christmas buying at the nation's stores helped boost December retail sales during an otherwise slow holiday season, retailers reported yesterday.As the season failed to measure up to expectations for the third year in a row, retailers slashed after-Christmas prices and shoppers came out in force.That last-minute rush saved the month for many retailers, with analysts characterizing the selling period as fair."If it hadn't been for the surge of selling that followed Christmas, it would have been very sad for most retailers," said Kurt Barnard, president of Barnard's Retail Trend Report, a New Jersey forecasting firm.

WAL-MART Stores Inc. announced last week that it would open about 185 stores in the fiscal year that will begin Feb. 1. The move was initiated in hopes of boosting merchandise and food sales for the world's largest retailer.The openings would include 120 to 125 supercenters, 50 discount stores and about 10 Sam's Club stores. Supercenters combine Wal-Mart's traditional discount stores with grocery stores.Wal-Mart is developing 50 to 60 stores to open internationally, in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, Indonesia, Mexico and Puerto Rico.

Retailers reported some of the best monthly sales of the year in August, exceeding expectations and making them dare to dream of a profitable December holiday season.Clothes sold well, particularly in discount stores, and department stores of all varieties reported same-store sales increases better than in the spring and winter."This is probably the best news for the year for retailers," said Alan Millstein at the Fashion News Network, a trade publication in New York. "Consumers are back in the malls and shopping."

BENTONVILLE, Ark. -- Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said yesterday that it will open about 185 stores in the fiscal year beginning Feb. 1 in a plan to boost merchandise and food sales.The company said the openings will include 120 to 125 supercenters, 50 discount stores and about 10 Sam's Clubs stores. The world's largest retailer now has 2,771 stores.Wal-Mart said about 90 of the supercenters would be expansions or relocations of its discount stores. Supercenters combine Wal-Mart's traditional discount stores with grocery stores.

NO NINTENDO maze, 3-D Empire State Building or any other puzzle from beneath last month's Christmas tree seems tougher to solve than the one about how America's retail industry has been doing.Here are a few of the pieces. Try to fit them together:"This is a bonanza of a Christmas," retail analyst Alan Millstein told The Sun's Liz Bowie a week ago. "Consumers took the rubber bands off their credit cards.""That was a lot of baloney," NatWest analyst Bob Buchanan said to the Associated Press.

Value City Department Stores will close all but one of its eight Maryland stores in the next several weeks as part of a restructuring that includes shedding 30 stores across the country. Seven stores have begun liquidation sales and will close when everything is sold, which company officials estimated would take about six weeks. Value City's store on Solomons Island Road in Annapolis is the only one that will remain open in the state. The Glen Burnie store on Ritchie Highway will be converted to a Burlington Coat Factory as part of a deal announced in October by Value City's former owner, Retail Ventures Inc., to sell the leases of up to 24 of its stores.

At a Safeway supermarket that opens today near Arundel Mills mall in Hanover, the strawberries take center stage. As part of a design concept the grocer is unveiling, the lights are low in the produce section and spotlights are aimed at the displays of fruit. "The produce is the star, so it is being highlighted," said Greg TenEyck, director of public affairs for Safeway's eastern division, based in Lanham. Last week, Safeway Inc. and Giant Food Inc. settled with their unionized workers on a new contract to avoid a strike like the long one that disrupted the grocery industry in Southern California recently.

I recently started an individual retirement account and own shares of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. What is the outlook for the company? - C.C., via the Internet The world's biggest retailer, with more than 4,750 stores worldwide, is on the offensive. It is opening prototypes of smaller stores so it can expand into urban areas that have taken steps to ban 184,000-square-foot Supercenters. Stores being tested are less than half that size, which means drugstores, supermarkets and dollar stores will soon be facing tough new competition.

Despite a weak economy this year, American consumers have been surprisingly loath to put away their wallets and purses. If the economy doesn't slip into a double-dip recession, it is these spendthrift consumers who deserve much credit. Spending could hardly have been described as robust, but the MARTS Retail Sales index has been in positive territory month-to-month for most of the year. The two big winners have been electronics retailers and discount stores. Two of the latter - BJ's Wholesale Club and Costco - are on our list, but two other standouts have nothing to do with discounting.

Drugstores, discounters and furniture stores helped lead a rise in retail sales last month as consumers continued hunting for bargains while shying away from department stores and specialty and apparel stores. Many retailers were helped by the Easter holiday - which came two weeks earlier this year - but unseasonably cool weather across most of the country tempered sales in March. Nationwide, major retailers' sales climbed 6.4 percent over March 2001 at stores open at least a year, according to Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi Ltd.'s index of 81 national chain stores.

At the Big Lots store in Dundalk, shoppers can pick up corn flakes for $2.49 or a recliner for $299. They'll find Christmas wreaths, Barbie dolls, crockpots and vacuum cleaners, all for less than they'd expect to pay elsewhere. That's why Dee Blankenship of Dundalk shops at the nation's largest closeout retailer. "It's affordable," said the mother of three, who was shopping in the toy department. "I buy stuff for my little son, and if he rips the wheels off, it's not the end of the world."

Retailers slashed prices to move merchandise, and some consumers spent their tax rebates, boosting July sales moderately at the nation's biggest chain stores. Discounters - led by Wal-Mart Stores Inc. - benefited most as cautious consumers bought mostly necessities such as food and household goods. Even with deeper than usual discounts, fewer shoppers came through the stores during the month than in July last year, retailers said. The National Retail Traffic Index compiled by Chicago analytics firm RCT showed traffic off 4.2 percent in July.

Retail sales grew at an expected slow pace in February, as U.S. consumers continued tightening spending amid a weakening economy. Sales at the nation's biggest chain stores rose, on average, 2.8 percent for the month, when retailers typically clear out winter merchandise, a Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi index showed. The gain fell short of a much healthier increase of 6 percent in February 1999, before consumer confidence began to ebb because of higher fuel costs and a plunging stock market.

Get your hair trimmed and styled. Apply for a loan. Leave the car for an oil change, and drop off the kids in the game room. Stock up on socks, detergent, printer cartridges, milk, ground beef, bananas, paint and mulch. You could, in one trip, get a rotisserie chicken for dinner, some extra tennis balls and a rifle. It's one-stop shopping the Wal-Mart way, at "supercenters" up to twice the size of a typical Wal-Mart. For the world's largest retailer, it's also the future. With $165 billion in annual sales, 4,100 stores and more than a million workers, Wal-Mart has reached unparalleled dominance in the history of retailing.

Sluggish summer apparel sales contributed to a lackluster July for the nation's retailers, as the pace of spending in stores slowed for the fifth consecutive month. Many national chains reported monthly comparable-store sales yesterday that either remained flat or declined, when measured against July 1999 levels. Analysts blamed a combination of high debt, rising interest rates, a cooling economy and unseasonably cool weather in parts of the nation. Industrywide, chain store sales rose an average 4.2 percent, according to the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi's tally of 79 chain stores.