News

Phoenix -- Sprouts Farmers Market has commenced an underwritten public offering of 22.5 million shares of its common stock by affiliates of Apollo Global Management and certain other stockholders of the company. The underwriters of the offering will have the option to purchase up to an additional 3.375 million shares of common stock from the selling stockholders.

Online eyewear retailer glasses.com is launching its virtual try-on app for iPhone and iPod touch devices. The glasses.com virtual try-on app launched this past July for iPad.

New York - Forty-one percent of respondents are expecting to make purchases in-store this holiday season more often than they did last year, which should make for a busy Black Friday, according to MasterCard’s 2013 Holiday Spending Survey.

The survey also found that more than half of Americans who use their debit or credit card for holiday purchases and have a rewards program plan to cash in their points this season. Of this group, 40% will strategically spend on one card only to rack up rewards points.

In other findings:

Bentonville, Ark. -- At 8 a.m. on Friday, Nov. 22, Wal-Mart will kick off a pre-Black Friday savings event in stores and online, lowering the prices on popular toys and electronics, to match select Black Friday offers from Target, Toys R' Us and Best Buy one week early.

Home Depot reaped the benefits of continuing improvement in the housing market with third quarter sales of $19.5 billion, a 7.4% increase from $18.1 billion in the third quarter of fiscal 2012.

On a like-for-like basis (last year's quarter had an extra calendar week), comparable-store sales for the third quarter of fiscal 2013 were positive 7.4%, and comp sales for U.S. stores were positive 8.2%.

Yonkers, N.Y. -- Two-thirds of shoppers will spend the same amount of money (54%) or more money (12%) than they did last year. A new Consumer Reports poll also reveals that 33% will spend less money, similar to the 37% who said the same when asked last year.

Toronto -- Sears Canada posted a net loss of about $46.7 million USD in the third quarter of fiscal 2013, more than double the net loss of $21 million it posted in the same quarter of the previous fiscal year. One-time charges of $41 million related to restructuring and asset impairment helped widen the company’s net loss.

In addition, revenues of $940.7 million were down about 6% from $1 billion. In one bright spot, same-store sales climbed 1.2%. Sears Canada is in the middle of a three-year turnaround program launched in 2012.

This year, it seems that you can’t turn on the TV or read the news without seeing that another store is opening on Thanksgiving. Some believe Black Friday is fading away as more retailers choose to open early to compete with other shopping options such as online sales. I don’t think that Black Friday is going away, but I do think that it is evolving to best serve the needs of the consumer. Any retailer that is going to be successful long-term has to evolve, too.