The New Retail Thread

datadyne007 said:
Totally missing the point.
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The point is, best buy and radio shack are going under because they are selling too much overpriced garbage at too high a price with useless customer service. There was a time you could go to radio shack and literally build a radio; or in my case, upgrade the interior wiring harness of an old car with LEDs. Now maybe you still can still buy the stuff there, but good luck finding an employee who knows what you're even taking about. When was the last time best buy was the best buy? Or even a decent buy? I think there is a market for brick and mortar electronics stores still, but they really need to narrow in their demographic and up the service to be not just covenant, but a place people will go not just as a last resort becauae they forgot something. Take the convenience factor and build on it. And stop blatantly ripping off customers
 
Actually, if Micro Center were next to a T stop instead of on the worst-of-the-worst walking portion of Memorial Dr. and the employees actually organized the aisles semi-coherently it would probably put every WorstBuy and Radio Shack in Greater Boston out of business.
 
palindrome said:
www.amazon.com
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Well yeah, I do a lot of buying from Amazon, but sometimes its nice to window shop and avoid shipping costs.

I suppose the Target does replace some of the needs that the Best Buy provides, although I'm still not sure what kind of selection a 'city' Target has compared to a the typical suburban one.
 
Something nobody has mentioned yet in regards to Best Buy: they actually provide a really valuable service which is free electronics recycling. You can just walk in with your old monitor or whatever (bought anywhere) and just hand it to them and they'll recycle it.

That's what I'll miss most about this location. Well, really the only thing I'll miss about it.
 
Proposition Joe said:
Well yeah, I do a lot of buying from Amazon, but sometimes its nice to window shop and avoid shipping costs.

I suppose the Target does replace some of the needs that the Best Buy provides, although I'm still not sure what kind of selection a 'city' Target has compared to a the typical suburban one.
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Gateway Center's one of those superduperduper size ones. And it won't be a scary walk from Wellington too much longer when they replace the Mystic Bridge on 16. Watertown Mall one got expanded in size and now has the supermarket in it. Somerville is standard size and will be walking distance to Union before long. I suppose if gradually-sinking Kmart starts another wave of store closures and can't pay the rent on Assembly that Target would be a logical fit to take over despite being right across the river from the huge one (doesn't hurt Home Depot any).


Just about the only thing WorstBuy has that isn't easily replicated by anyone else is a household appliance section to go along with the full electronics selections...stoves, washing machines, etc. Not nearly as good a selection of them as Home Depot, but you aren't getting a front-loading washer at Target. Although I suppose when Sears inevitably goes belly-up the Targets of the world will start filling that niche too.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Actually, if Micro Center were next to a T stop instead of on the worst-of-the-worst walking portion of Memorial Dr. and the employees actually organized the aisles semi-coherently it would probably put every WorstBuy and Radio Shack in Greater Boston out of business.
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I dropped off a laptop to get fixed and Microcenter lost it and then wouldn't return my calls. I went in there like 5 times to talk to a manager and it was always, "Oh, you need to talk to a different manager." I sent emails, letters, etc. Never got a response. Finally called their corporate office in the Midwest and shortly thereafter some sniveling manager from the Cambridge store emailed me and said he hadn't gotten any of my messages (yet somehow he had my email address). Lost all my work from grad school.
In short: I HATE MICROCENTER.
 
AmericanFolkLegend said:
I dropped off a laptop to get fixed and Microcenter lost it and then wouldn't return my calls. I went in there like 5 times to talk to a manager and it was always, "Oh, you need to talk to a different manager." I sent emails, letters, etc. Never got a response. Finally called their corporate office in the Midwest and shortly thereafter some sniveling manager from the Cambridge store emailed me and said he hadn't gotten any of my messages (yet somehow he had my email address). Lost all my work from grad school.
In short: I HATE MICROCENTER.
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Law suit? :D
 
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Seems that "Chatime" some kind of Asian bubble tea place is opening on Brighton Ave in the old bedding store.
 
Interesting. The new Target in Fenway will be about 40% bigger than the South Bay Target... I always figured it would be fairly small because it's a CityTarget. This Boston Globe article says:

Target Inc. is coming to the Fenway area next year with its own urban-concept store called “CityTarget,” the retailer’s first on the East Coast. But this location will actually be bigger.


The CityTarget that will occupy four floors in a building under construction at the intersection of Boylston and Kilmarnock streets won’t just be bigger than the company’s other urban stores. It will be even bigger than an average full-size Target store.

The CityTarget in the Fenway will cover a whopping 160,000 square feet. Escalators, elevators, a first-floor lobby and fourth-floor stock room will reduce the overall shopping space to something comparable to the standard Target store, which occupies about 135,000 square feet, said Kamau Witherspoon, Target’s senior director of store operations.

Another point of comparison: Target’s only other Boston location, in South Bay Center, replaced a Kmart store but still covers only 117,000 square feet.
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FenwayResident said:
Interesting. The new Target in Fenway will be about 40% bigger than the South Bay Target... I always figured it would be fairly small because it's a CityTarget. This Boston Globe article says:
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They've done multi-floor stores before. The full-size Stoughton location above a parking garage has special shopping cart escalators. Push your cart into the 'teeth' of this escalator, then step onto the regular escalator immediately adjacent and ride down with it. I would imagine they just end up taking that concept and stacking the whole store vertically.
 
Target tries new, bigger strategy for Fenway store

By Taryn Luna | Globe Correspondent October 11, 2014

Big-box retailers and giant supermarkets, from Walmart to Wegmans, know how to reshape their strategies for a city market. The first rule of thumb: Make the stores smaller.

Target Corp. is coming to the Fenway area next year with its own urban-concept store called “CityTarget,” the retailer’s first on the East Coast. But this location will actually be bigger.






The CityTarget that will occupy four floors in a building under construction at the intersection of Boylston and Kilmarnock streets won’t just be bigger than the company’s other urban stores. It will be even bigger than an average full-size Target store.

The CityTarget in the Fenway will cover a whopping 160,000 square feet. Escalators, elevators, a first-floor lobby and fourth-floor stock room will reduce the overall shopping space to something comparable to the standard Target store, which occupies about 135,000 square feet, said Kamau Witherspoon, Target’s senior director of store operations.

Another point of comparison: Target’s only other Boston location, in South Bay Center, replaced a Kmart store but still covers only 117,000 square feet.

Witherspoon said the company selected the Fenway property because of its location. The large scale isn’t much of an issue because the retailer can customize the CityTarget model to fit the space, he said.

“The opportunity to be in such a prominent location near Fenway and near a T stop was really appealing to us,” Witherspoon said. “Now, many of our urban guests have to travel a long distance outside the city to reach a Target.”

Witherspoon said the company finds it increasingly difficult to identify sites for full-sized stores in densely populated areas. The Minneapolis retailer first introduced the CityTarget concept two years ago to solve that problem. Now there are eight CityTarget stores — in Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Portland, Ore.

The stores often occupy less square footage than a traditional Target, offering more products geared toward pedestrian commuters and urban dwellers. For example, the store will sell two-person bistro sets instead of six-person patio sets and 8-pound bags of dog food instead of the 40-pound bags found at typical stores. The store also will offer a grab-and-go food assortment for busy commuters and a grocery section. A Starbucks will also occupy part of the second floor.

Mike Tesler, a retail professor at Bentley University, said the unique floor set-up might create a challenge for the retailer because there is no merchandise on the first floor. Customers must travel up an escalator or elevator to reach the products.

“It’s visually not as aggressive to the consumer as normal locations,” Tesler said. “People will know it’s there. Staying top of mind will be a challenge.”

Target is among many big-box retailers that have grown over the last few decades by focusing on giant stores in suburban markets. Now that suburban sprawl has slowed, those companies are following the migration of residents back into urban areas to try to boost sales, said Marshal Cohen, chief retail analyst with the NPD Group, a market research firm in New York.

Most retailers are still trying to prove that the formula of smaller stores with fewer products can generate enough sales to work. Target’s move to expand its CityTarget stores to the East Coast with the new Fenway location suggests the retailer might have identified a rare growth opportunity in a relatively stagnant industry, he said.

“Growth is hard to come by in retail these days,” Cohen said. “Finding an in-store formula with growth potential is a huge success if they can pull it off.”
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Boston Globe
 
(Yet another) Pret opened on the corner of Washington & State recently. (in that pedestrian only area next to the Old State House)
 
^ They just closed a Boylston location did they not? Must be a consolidation, seeing as their undergoing a major Boston expansion.
 
Just a couple things:

Walgreens across from CVS at chinatown is now open,
Nan Ling Chinese on mass ave is becoming "Dumpling Palace",
and The McDonald's in chinatown is closed for some reason....not sure if it's permanent.
 
My pics are always shitty but that tasty burger at back bay is under construction finally...was supposed to open during the summer.
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