September 2013

A Tale of Two Retailers

A recent trip to the East coast found me in a mid-sized, somewhat economically depressed city that’s undergoing quite a revival in its downtown core. I had the chance to walk the downtown with one of the people intimately involved in that development as he explained the vision and showed me the construction.  Part of what

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The Buckle’s Quarter

This, I’m happy to say, is going to be pretty short. But I’ve gone to the trouble of reviewing their information so I might as well write something.  As I’ve noted before, what intrigues me about The Buckle is the way they’ve integrated their private label brands with the other brands they carry in their merchandising. They

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Joining the Party; Quiksilver’s July 31 Quarter

It’s almost unanimous. Companies in our industry, (whatever industry we’re in) or for that matter most other industries, are cutting expenses, rationalizing supply chains, targeting marketing efforts, cutting SKUs, creating omni channels, growing ecommerce business, being more discriminating in distribution and generally doing all the things they have to do if they assume that sales growth

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Globe’s Annual Results

Globe reported a loss for the year ended June 30 of $6 million compared to a profit of $62,000 in the prior calendar period (pcp). That’s in Australian dollars, as are all the numbers in this article. Total revenues rose 2% from $83 to $84.1 million. The Globe brand was up 10%, but Dwindle fell 15%. Cost of sales

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Billabong’s Annual Report

Billabong released its results for the year ended June 30, 2013 a few days ago, and I’ve been plowing through the 200 or so pages of material and listening to the conference call.   My recent writings about public companies have been lamenting that they are public. Not just because they have to share their travails

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