Mass Merchant

Sears Holdings continues to shrink its traditional store portfolio even as it plans to open more smaller, specialty stores.   The embattled retailer on Friday announced that it will close 43 more locations -- eight Sears stores and 35 Kmart locations -- by early October. This is on top of the 265 store closings that it has already announced for this year.   

Nordstrom will be erecting its second off-price Nordstrom Rack store in Milwaukee. The Seattle-based retailer has announced plans for a 26,800-sq.-ft. location at the Bayshore Town Center in the city’s North Shore.   The Nordstrom Rack will be erected on the site of a vacated Sears at the Olshan Properties center, where a Total Wine & More store is also slated to take up some of the space.  

As it turns out, there was lots of interest in Whole Foods Market.   The retailer was fielding other potential deals, including approaches by four private equity firms and two unnamed companies identified only as "Company X" and "Company Y," when Amazon made its move, CNBC reported.   

The town managers of New Lenox, Illinois, needed a new train station, so they bought a shopping center.   It was three years ago that Mayor Tim Baldermann and New Lenox purchased the Rock Island Station Shopping Center, according to the Chicago Tribune.  It invested more than $3 million in the site, which included buying out the businesses of the four stores there, demolishing them, and doing an environmental clean-up.    

In a deal that will bring together two longtime home shopping rivals, QVC is acquiring the Home Shopping Network.    Liberty Interactive Corp., owner of QVC, currently owns 38.2% of HSN parent HSNi. Under the agreement announced Thursday, Liberty will acquire the remaining 61.8% stake, making HSNi a wholly-owned subsidiary. The all-stock transaction has an enterprise value of $2.6 billion.   

Victoria's Secret is casting a shadow on parent company L Brands.   L Brands said that net sales fell 6% to $1.21 billion for the five weeks ending period ending July 2. Total same-store sales fell 9%, worse than expected, dragged down by a 17% decline at Victoria's Secret. On the positive side, same-store sales rose 8% at Bath & Body Works.  

“Ridgmar…has always had a good regional location, and that’s not something to give up on,” Weitzman broker Bob Young told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.     A fixture in the central Texas city since the 1970s, Ridgmar Mall is is replacing shuttered Neiman Marcus and Macy anchors with a SeaQuest Aquarium in an attempt to escape the fate of two other malls that have closed in Tarrant County: North Hills Mall in North Richland Hills and Six Flags Mall in Arlington.  

The nation's largest wholesale club operator reported strong sales for the month of June, both domestically and globally.   Costco Wholesale Corp. posted net sales of $12.17 billion for the five weeks ended July 2, 2017, up 5% from $11.33 billion during the year-ago period. Total same-store sales were up 6%.   In the U.S., same-store sales rose 6.5% in June. International same-store sales increased 6.2%. Canadian same-store sales rose 3.2%.