STORES Magazine - July 2008 - (Page T8)

2OO8 • TOP 1OO retailers Sponsored by POWER PLAYERS • ENTERTAINMENT retailers his is a new Power Player category this year, replacing the more narrowly-focused booksellers grouping. Though it might, at first glance, appear to be a hodge-podge of diverse specialty stores, there is more overlap and convergence than the companies’ traditional realms would indicate. Nothing embodies this more than Borders’ current concept stores, which bring together digital and Internet options with the hands-on approach to books, CDs and DVDs. Borders is opening 14 of these prototype stores this year, combining 170,000 book, music and movie titles T 33 66 where rentals constitute only half its revenues. Blockbuster’s Total Access program enables it to compete with Netflix and other electronic retailers, while video games constitute a growth area for store merchandise. With the release of the highly-anticipated “Grand Theft Auto IV” earlier this year, for example, Blockbuster enjoyed a 4.5 percent share of the sales, compared with the 1 to 1.5 percent share it usually captures in game sales. on the shelves with digital centers where customers can download e-books, mix and match songs on CDs and create electronic photo albums, family histories and the like. Apple’s iTunes Store is now the largest seller of music, surpassing Wal-Mart, Amazon.com, Best Buy and Target. And iTunes broke the news in May that it would sell movie downloads, beginning the same day the titles are released on DVD. Blockbuster, once viewed as a dinosaur lumbering toward extinction, has rejuvenated itself to the point Company GameStop Blockbuster Barnes & Noble Borders Group iTunes TransWorld Ent. Netflix 2007 Revenues (000) $7,093,962 5,542,400 5,410,828 3,820,900 2,496,000 1,265,700 1,205,340 ComparableStore Sales 24.7% 1.7 1.8 1.5 * N.A. -8.0 N.A. Sales per Store $1,347,637 710,564 6,780,486 3,493,154 N.A. 1,582,125 N.A. * Domestic superstores only N.A. Not applicable search recently reported, energy drinks, online socializing and banking and being “green” are in, while what’s out includes dining out and spending more on clothes than one can afford. Retailers grasp this. Video game merchant GameStop, ranked No. 47 among the Top 100 Retailers, saw sales jump 33.4 percent last year (to more than $7 billion) while earnings soared 82.2 percent — and that doesn’t include the release of this year’s monster-selling game, “Grand Theft Auto IV.” Perhaps no retailer embodies societal cross currents as T8 STORES / JULY 2008 much as Amazon.com, which pushed its way into the Top 25 this year on the strength of a 38.5 percent increase in sales. Amazon has always been more about the future than the past or present: recall that Time named founder and chairman Jeffrey Bezos its Man of the Year in 1999, years before the company turned a profit. Amazon is about staying current and keeping on top of things such as digital downloading and reducing the price of its Kindle e-book reader without abandoning loyal customers who still prefer to read hard copy, listen to music on CDs or watch DVDs. WWW.STORES.ORG http://Amazon.com http://WWW.STORES.ORG

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of STORES Magazine - July 2008

STORES Magazine - July 2008 Contents Executive Editor's Page President's Page Dearth of Retail Creativity What Shoppers Think Wow, Is That a Wawa? 10 Things You May Have Missed Numbers Worth Counting Full Price/Markdown Retail People Merchandising Strategy Concept2Watch Point of Sale Outsourcing Human Resources Top 100 Retailers Store Design RFID IT Operations Systems Managements LP Vantage Point Newsbeat Cover Story Emergency Response Systems Background Checks LOEB Retail Letter Point of View NRF News Retail Crossword Retail Industry Calendar Last Laugh

STORES Magazine - July 2008

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