Tedium Highlight in Retail: When a retailer fails—whether at a single location or company-wide—their first instinct is often to discount the crap nobody wanted to buy. Here's why. 

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Tag results: Retail

Who Sets the Prices?

The legal decision that fostered the idea of the manufacturer’s suggested retail price, and why it still sticks around even though that decision was overturned.

Let's Get Sauced

Yes, this is an article about ranch dressing. And yes, ranch dressing was invented at Hidden Valley Ranch. Here's some stuff you didn't know about ranch.

Booting Up The Cash Register

Computers didn’t immediately lend themselves to retail, but ambitious early computer retailers sold ‘em anyway. Eventually, they got trampled.

This Old Scandal

Why Bob Vila, perhaps the most famous handyman in history, may have set the stage for a digital era in which stars aren’t afraid to cash in on their names.

Phar Too Ambitious

The story of Phar-Mor, the pharmacy chain that decided that just being a pharmacy chain wasn’t interesting enough and tried to beat Walmart.

Blister In The Store

Why plastic blister packs and clamshell packs, despite the near-universal frustration they create among consumers, have become a truism of consumer goods.

The Mail-Order Blues

A look back at the cheap department store guitar and its impact on modern music. Sears’ retail Harmony meant way more to our culture than some big-box stores.

Rental Self-Own

How the music industry let the perfect solution to file-sharing fall through its fingers in the ’80s—or how record rentals bolstered Japan’s music industry.

Hometown Proud

The Independent Grocers Alliance (IGA), a loosely franchised grocery chain, is basically designed to allow locals to own their own stores. It's genius.

The Halloween-Industrial Complex

After the 2008 recession, commercial real estate firms had a ton of empty buildings. Fortunately, Halloween stores were ready to fill the gap—for a month.

Network Effects

For more than a decade, it's been a common sight in U.S. airports to see newsstand-style shops named for cable news networks. Why, of all things, this idea?

The Gift Of Abstraction

Pondering why the electronic gift card, which is newer than you think, took over the retail industry so quickly. Who had it first, anyway?

Buy, Don’t Rent

How the rent-to-own retail model, exemplified by Rent-a-Center, evolved from a mainstream model in the U.K. to one widely seen as predatory in the U.S.

Switching Labels

Hey, shoplifters: Trying to pull a fast one on a retail outlet by changing the price tags or barcodes is serious business, even when Legos are involved.

We're Running Out of Widgets

What do Barnes & Noble, Radio Shack, and Blockbuster have in common? Simple: Their flawed business models relied on selling physical objects in stores.

When Tech Hit Retail

Point-of-sale systems dramatically modernized supply chains and allowed consumers to go cashless, but they were not without their learning curves.

We Were Selling Computers All Wrong

Big-box stores have never really been a great fit for selling computers, and a big reason for that is that retailers didn't initially know how to sell them.

A Little off the Top

The average barber shop or hair salon for some reason has a major aversion to credit cards despite their wide use. Blame the economics of being a barber.

You Don't Win Friends With Salad

The salad bar is something that many restauranteurs claim to have invented, but we know for sure that just one guy invented the sneeze guard.

I'd Buy That for a Dollar

Don't be fooled by the names of chains like Family Dollar, Dollar Tree, or Five Below. These companies, like all dollar stores, are big business.
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