Stores

Economic gloom, as expected, dragged down Christmas sales at retailers throughout the U.S., with discounters like Wal-Mart, luxury vendors like Neiman Marcus and pretty much everybody in between saying that their holiday season results were poorer than expected. In the first wave of what is expected to be a steady flow of bad news from the retail sector in early 2009, individual companies yesterday began reporting December results and announcing steps to cope with the disappointing sales and profits.

Sales at Giant Food declined yet again in the fourth quarter of last year, but the grocer's parent company said that it has seen positive results from a price reduction program it recently implemented at the supermarket chain. Dutch food company Royal Ahold NV, which owns Giant, also said plans to sell Columbia-based U.S. Foodservice, the food distributor it also owns, are on track for later this year. "It's good to be a seller when there is a lot of interest," Ahold President and CEO Anders Moberg said in a conference call with analysts yesterday.

Two years ago, Wal-Mart began a counterassault on its critics, launching a re-imaging campaign to thwart those who had successfully painted an unsavory picture of the company as an employer who didn't treat or pay its workers well, among other things. The world's largest retailer embarked on a public relations blitz, introducing initiatives to portray it as more environmentally friendly, more in tune with the communities where it was building and as a better employer to its workers. The strategy has succeeded in some areas, but the company remains a target of criticism on other fronts.

Shoppers scouring for good buys at bargain magnet C-Mart can see the changes on the sales floor. Workers replaced handwritten price tags with bar-coded tickets. Computerized machines are in, while old-fashioned cash registers are out. By January, with a click of a mouse, customers should be able buy discount designer clothes and furniture now found only at C-Mart's Joppatowne and Landover stores. C-Mart's new owners want to build the company into a national retailer. That is a challenging proposition: trying to balance the roots of this paper-and-pencil enterprise against ambitious goals to become a big chain.

The fresh trout, $6.99 a pound, lay glistening on ice in a case at the Reisterstown Road Giant Food in Owings Mills earlier this week. There also was tilapia and cod and shrimp nestled in the frosty chips. But during the next few months, the familiar case of seafood dinner choices at this store and more than 50 Giant outlets in the region will be removed. In their place will be refrigerators and freezers filled with pre-packaged fish as the grocery chain moves to a self-service system in a little over a quarter of its 190 stores in the region.

Thomas Faulk, an assistant attorney general, has mastered the natty barrister look: Crisp and pressed with a playful mix of colors and patterns. Faulk, 37, suspects it's a style that transcends that of your typical corporate lawyer, who tends toward white shirts and a limited suit palette.Faulk, who lives in West Baltimore, attributes his attention to appearance to his grandmother, and to his heritage. "Clothes are an important part of the black experience," he says. "It's definitely something that's stressed in terms of how you present to the community, a reflection of family ... I was raised by my grandmother and extended family.

Independent grocer Valu Food is poised to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy by spring and later in the year plans to start remodeling stores and looking for new sites, the chain's president said yesterday.Louis Denrich, in comments to the 265-member Baltimore/Washington Grocery Manufacturers Representatives Inc., sought to reassure many of his suppliers of the chain's viability.The locally owned chain is the sixth-largest in the Baltimore region with 10 supermarkets. It filed for Chapter 11 protection in November, with an estimated $3.5 million owed to its 20 largest creditors.

Hechinger Co.'s announcement that it will close its remaining stores begs a basic question: who's going to occupy all that space left behind by one of the Baltimore area's oldest and most entrenched retail chains?It's a question that is likely to intrigue the commercial real estate community for some time to come.Susan B. Anderson, vice president of H & R Retail Inc. in Timonium, called the liquidation and dispersion of the Hechinger properties "a big deal."She said the sheer diversity of the chain's holdings makes it impossible to generalize about what will become of the properties.

BENTONVILLE, Ark. -- Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s fiscal second-quarter profit rose 21 percent as the expanding U.S. economy and a push into groceries boosted sales. The world's largest retailer also clamped down on costs.Net income rose to $1.25 billion, or 28 cents a share, from $1.03 billion, or 23 cents, a year ago, the company said yesterday. Sales in the quarter that ended July 31 rose 15 percent to $38.5 billion from $33.5 billion.Wal-Mart's low prices, combined with rising wages and high employment, lifted sales of everything from electronics to clothing.

Strong consumer spending in April boosted retail sales above expectations at the nation's biggest chain stores, despite an Easter holiday that fell in March this year.Spring apparel and home goods led the way for average sales to rise above the 3 percent analysts had predicted.But some major chains, notably Target and Sears, Roebuck and Co., reported lower sales.Specialty stores such as AnnTaylor Stores Corp., Limited Inc. and Talbots fared especially well, which the chains said should lead to better-than-expected first-quarter earnings, to be released later this month.

$2 million in U.S. funds to map broadband needs A coalition of rural Maryland counties will receive $2 million in federal stimulus money to begin mapping broadband needs and existing fiber-optic cable in western, southern and Eastern Shore counties, but it won't pay for building new connections. The Salisbury-based Maryland Broadband Coalition will use $1.5 million from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration over two years to collect information about the need for broadband, as well as what already exists in those areas, and the other $500,000 will go toward planning costs over the next five years.

Earlier this year, the Baltimore County Health Department dispatched two 18-year-old police cadets to 80 local stores where cigarettes are sold. Want to guess how often the teenagers were asked to show some form of identification? A miserable four out of 10 times. When county officials surveyed stores close to county middle and high schools, the results weren't much better: ID was requested less than half the time. Whenever the sole female cadet purchased cigarettes from male store clerks, the results were even more troubling - not once was she asked to show her driver's license or any other form of identification.

Jennifer Williams, a young mother of two, lives in an East Baltimore neighborhood where corner stores and carry-outs are the only places to shop. Yet Williams and other carless residents of inner-city "food deserts" are not as stranded as they might seem. They regularly shop at full-sized supermarkets miles from home by catching rides in hack cabs. "I go all the time - twice a week," she said. Illegal and notoriously dangerous, unlicensed cabs are an unlikely ally in the search for affordable and healthful food.

A night flight to London crammed into seat 29A, but with sleep thanks to modern pharmaceuticals, and I was fairly fresh and bright on arrival at Heathrow. Wrestled the bags aboard the train and cruised into the city and lugged the luggage up stairs and into a lovely quiet hotel. It's in the financial district, near St. Paul's. Enormous anonymous buildings like filing cabinets nearby, and tucked between is a pleasant park on Newgate Street made from an old graveyard, some of the gravestones leaning against the wall, and here is a lovely memorial to ordinary persons who lost their lives in attempting to save others.

Retailers looking to draw consumers to their stores during the slow economy are trying to get shoppers to think like it is the Christmas season, when stores offer some of the best deals of the year. They're looking to woo people with "Christmas in July" sales that they say are as good as the bargains in November and December. The summer Christmas sale concept isn't a new one, but it has evolved to include more than just holiday merchandise as retailers look for ways to bring in customers during the slow period right before the back-to-school season, retail experts said.

FILM 'Star Trek' : Lost creator J.J. Abrams takes the classic series back to square one, and the results are kind of cosmic. It's an adrenaline rush of action and adventure with just enough nostalgia. Finally relieved of the original cast, it boldly goes where no Trek has gone before. In theaters Friday. POP MUSIC 'White Lies for Dark Times': : by Ben Harper ... : The folk rocker switches up his sound and his backup band. With White Lies, we get a harder, louder edge and the Relentless 7 in lieu of the Innocent Criminals.

NEW YORK -U.S. retailers' February sales showed their best performance in five months, aided by pent-up demand for new spring merchandise, and Presidents Day and Valentine's Day sales. Still, the better-than-expected performance didn't mean there's light at the end of the tunnel for retailers in the face of the across-the board consumer cutbacks, analysts said. They said some results were also driven by promotions that hurt profit margins. March sales will likely be negative with a calendar shift of Easter to April, they said.

Wegmans Food Markets Inc. plans to bring one of its large supermarkets with gourmet offerings such as sushi, European-style cafes and patisseries to Abingdon, a move expected to radically alter Harford County's food retail landscape. The retailer expects soon to sign a lease to anchor a planned 350,000-square-foot, mixed-use center at Emmorton and Woodsdale roads just north of Interstate 95, a Wegmans spokeswoman said yesterday. The store, still to be designed, could be in the range of 120,000 to 140,000 square feet and employ as many as 600 people, Jo Natale said.

Ice storms across a broad swath of the eastern U.S. and diminished supplies of rock salt are causing shortages of some ice-melting products in Baltimore-area stores - even as another storm brews. "My wife and I have been to, like, 10 stores, and nada," said Michael Schwartzburg of Pikesville, who searched stores in northern Baltimore County with his wife. "No one has any salt left." That's not true everywhere. But managers at several Baltimore-area stores said they were seeing heavy demand for salt and other snow- and ice-melting chemicals.

Retailer Filene's Basement, known for its discounted brand names and annual bridal gown sale, is preparing to close three stores in Columbia, Hunt Valley and Towson, leaving the Inner Harbor location as its only spot in the Baltimore region. The three Baltimore-area stores are among 11 locations nationwide that are expected to be shut down by the end of next month unless the retailer is able to negotiate lower rents with their respective landlords, Filene's general counsel, Julie Davis, said in a brief interview yesterday.