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Posted by Brent Felgner on June 26, 2008
And the winner Is… All right, are you ready for the answers to this edition of Know Your Retailers? Here we go. Among Wal-Mart, Kmart and Target in pre-Father’s Day Sunday FSIs: The retailer with the lowest average price point (to no one’s surprise, I’m sure) was Kmart, at an average of $46.96 per item. If you got it right give yourself 1 point; if you got it wrong, subtract 20 and consider another line of work. (Well, if you guessed Wal-Mart, only subtract 10 and stick around.) This is the result of ESL’s — sorry, I meant Kmart’s — continuing and increasingly desperate attempts to drive traffic into its stores with a (fill-in-the-blank yourself) merchandising str...Read More Let's play: "Know Your Retailers!"
Posted by Brent Felgner on June 25, 2008
Let’s play: Know Your Retailers!So you think you know all there is to know about your biggest competitors or customers? Think again. Some of the big retailers ran Sunday FSIs on the weekend before Father’s Day — not a particularly big holiday for the home textiles industry. Nevertheless, the ads offered the opportunity for some interesting side-by-side comparisons of how these companies position themselves in the marketplace. They might challenge some notions of what they are doing even as they confirm others, and I decided to test some of my observations. As if to prove that I really don’t have a life, I actually sat down with a spreadsheet —this on a Sunday, mind you — and charted their price points, all 1,141 of them. ...Read More Linens 'n Things 'n Bears, Oh My
Posted by Brent Felgner on March 19, 2008
Linens 'n Things 'n Bears, Oh MyAs Linens 'n Things readies its quarterly report for release tomorow (March 20), the noise surrounding this company is getting louder. During Tuesday's Icahn Enterprises conference call, the WestPoint Home parent answered an analyst's direct inquiry by saying it had limited "balance sheet exposure" to LNT but that it was continuing to monitor the situation. That, of course, has been what a lot of home textiles companies have been doing since well before winter market when some suppliers — for a moment, at least — found themselves holding the retailer's trade debt, alone, on a mountainside. It made some people uncomfortable, to say the least. The eco...Read More Part II: Why Icahn Needs WestPoint
Posted by Brent Felgner on March 10, 2008
There’s money to be made with WestPoint International — above-market returns to be scratched out as it is cleaned up, refocused and (pick one) spun off or sold off, in whole or pieces. Carl Icahn makes money; that’s what he does perhaps better than anyone else. Ever the strategist, Icahn trumped the other secured lenders nearly three years ago by taking his junior secured debt, acquiring some senior debt and combining them to win the company out of bankruptcy. He beat the other secureds even after they brought in investor Wilbur Ross to d...Read More Why Icahn Needs WestPoint
Posted by Brent Felgner on March 6, 2008
Why Icahn Needs WestPoint(Part I) In late June, 2005, when Carl Icahn emerged from bankruptcy court with the free-and-clear remains of WestPoint Stevens in his pocket, the very first question I asked him was, “Now that you have it, what are you going to do with it?” He answered by talking about the $200 million cash infusion he was going to make in the company and about the possibility of a public offering to bring in an even larger investment. He spoke about turning it into a global sourcer — and, yes, maybe even a global source — for home textiles products. But his victory was then only a few minutes old, so he could be forgiven for dancing a bit and being a little ...Read More The Day After
Posted by Brent Felgner on August 24, 2007
The Day After By Brent Felgner Bank of America has made an investment in Countrywide Financial, the country’s largest mortgage lender that laid off employees last week and reportedly dipped into its credit facility to buck up liquidity. That’s a big vote of confidence for housing and credit markets, which need all the good news they can find. It’s also one more in a string of contradictions — much like the see-saw volatility we’ve seen lately in the stock markets. Construction credit has tightened, dealmakers are backing off M&As and IPOs and, surprise, hedge funds and other private equity are taking big hits. So, what of the soft home business? The industry-centric wisdom used to be that when the economy tanked, curtai...Read More Where is LNT headed?
Posted by Brent Felgner on August 1, 2007
Where is LNT headed? Here’s your hat. What’s your hurry? (Part I)
Posted by Brent Felgner on July 13, 2007
(Cover Factor: The extent to which the area of a knitted fabric is covered by yarn. Also an indication of the relative tightness of the knitting.)Cover Factor For Friday, July 13, 2007 This is the first blog in this series. Thanks for stopping by. It’s supposed to be a dialog, so please chime in any time. “Get out. Just get out, now.” How many times have you wanted to say that? We’ve been in home textiles showrooms too many times to observe the salesman’s dance to the tune of an unsmiling, very demanding, occasionally rude retail b...Read More Here’s your hat. What’s your hurry? (Part II)
Posted by Brent Felgner on July 13, 2007
(Cover Factor: The extent to which the area of a knitted fabric is covered by yarn. Also an indication of the relative tightness of the knitting.) ***************************************************************
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