Sales & Marketing

Entertainment retail isn't what it used to be. Today, it really is entertaining.

Take Delray Marketplace in Delray Beach, Fla., a 258,000-sq.-ft. Main Street development filled with entertainment offerings, restaurants and retailers that give you something fun to do and something fun to buy.

"Our goal was to create an entertainment, dining and shopping experience," said Jason Samreny, VP leasing with Indianapolis-based Kite Realty Group Trust, the project's developer.

I visited my first Von Maur store in 1999, a decade after I relocated from southern boomtown Atlanta to Lincoln, Neb., a sleepy college town that only really wakes up on Husker football Saturdays. Today I am back home in Baton Rouge, La., still no bustling metropolis, but the food and football trump.

SAN DIEGO, Calif. — The sun shined favorably this month on PriceSmart, which operates 31 warehouse clubs in 12 countries and one U.S. territory.

For the month of April 2013 net sales increased 11% to $176 million from $159 million in April a year earlier. For the eight months ended April 30, net sales increased 11% to $1,484 million from $1,337 million for the eight months ended April a year earlier. There were 30 warehouse clubs in operation at the end of April 2013 and 29 warehouse clubs in operation at the end of April 2012.

PHOENIX — Reality television star and Poison frontman Bret Michaels is bringing the eighties back to PetSmart with the Pets Rock collection, a line which has expanded to a throwback, neon-inspired line of apparel, toys and accessories for dogs.

York, Pa. -- The Bon-Ton Stores announced it will close its Younkers store in the Rapids Mall in Wisconsin Rapids, Wis.

The company will not renew the lease, which terminates July 31, 2013. The closing will impact approximately 45 associates at this location.

The Bon-Ton acquired the leasehold interests in the Wisconsin Rapids store as part of the Northern Department Store Group acquisition in 2006. The department store retailer said it does not expect costs associated with the closing of the location to be material.  

Sometimes the shortest pieces of advice are the best. Here are a few nuggets of wisdom pulled from Chain Store Age’s conversations with five leading real estate advisers and technology experts.

Ten years ago, demographic experts predicted a looming talent shortage: When the massive baby boom generation retired, the small Generation X would not have enough experienced leaders and managers to fill the positions that boomers would vacate.

SAN FRANCISCO — San Francisco attorney Dennis Herrera has launched a lawsuit against Monster Beverage Corporation for violating California law with its marketing of highly caffeinated energy drinks to children as young as six years old, despite scientific findings that such products may cause "significant morbidity in adolescents" from elevated blood pressure, brain seizures and severe cardiac events.