Sources: Chain Store Age, Business Insider
Author: Accelerated Analytics
Clarins, Coty and L’Oreal Launch the Responsible Beauty Initiative
Four leaders in the beauty industry – Clarins, Coty, Groupe Rocher, L’Oréal -, and EcoVadis, the leader in supply chain sustainability ratings, announced the launch of Responsible Beauty Initiative (RBI) earlier this week. The vision of Responsible Beauty Initiative is a global beauty industry where all suppliers have in place good ethical, social, environmental and business practices.
The Responsible Beauty Initiative brings together the global beauty industry in a collaborative effort to strengthen sustainable practices, improve environmental footprint and social impacts, and maximize shared value across its collective supply chain.
It will amplify members’ efforts to boost sustainability in their supply chains, while ensuring the suppliers of the industry have sound ethical, social, and environmental business practices in place. The RBI will achieve these objectives by:
- driving a common understanding of sustainability performance across the industry
- sharing best practices and processes
- leveraging common tools to create efficiencies and benefits for suppliers
The Responsible Beauty Initiative is built on a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) rating platform, operated by EcoVadis, as a common foundation for supplier assessment and interaction.
The Responsible Beauty Initiative will address the unique opportunities and challenges of the beauty industry global supply chains and will aim to drive the continuous improvement of sustainability practices. The founding members will sign the charter to officially launch RBI and invite other companies and suppliers in the industry to join.
Accelerated Analytics is a comprehensive software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution for collecting, analyzing, and reporting on retail EDI 852, POS, and supply chain data. We applaud customers Clarins, Coty and L’Oreal for being founding members of the Responsible Beauty Initiative.
Accelerated Analytics Customers Outperform Home Depot LY/TY Comps Again
Home Depot 3rd Quarter Results
The Home Depot announced its third quarter results yesterday, at $25.0 billion, up 8.1% from third quarter 2016. Comp store sales were up 7.9%, and comp sales for the US stores were up 7.7%. Hurricane-related selling is attributed to positively affecting sales by about $282 million. The Home Depot did incur hurricane expenses themselves of $104 million. The home improvement retailer lifted its 2017 sales growth estimates due to the two straight quarters of success. Second quarter results were the best in the company’s history. Their new estimate expects sales in 2017 will be up 6.3% and same store comp sales up 6.5%. The Home Depot operates 2,283 stores.
The Battle of the Black Friday Ads Has Begun!
Sources: BestBlackFriday.com, chron.com
WalMart Goes After Amazon This Holiday Season
WalMart announced a series of holiday-time strategies on Wednesday, primarily focused on battling the threat of Amazon taking away from their sales. Their holiday strategy includes three themed parties between now and December 16, across 7,000 stores, for a total of 20,000 in-store parties. The parties will give shoppers the opportunity to play with toys, take pictures with Santa, see product demonstrations and taste goods. In the stores, WalMart will have extra staff on hand to assist with checkout and grab additional items for shoppers. In addition, the retailer has also tripled its inventory and expanded its assortment of brands. WalMart will also offer price rollbacks on thousands of items.
WalMart is also going after Amazon’s helm as the low-price leader. A study was released this week showing that Amazon’s prices are typically 11% lower than WalMart, Target and Jet, but WalMart is closing in, being only 3% higher than Amazon across all products . The retailer is especially price competitive with Amazon in the beauty category, with products being 1% lower than Amazon on average. Experts state that going into the holiday season, the price war will continue to heat up across all of the categories of products WalMart sells.
Source: Chain Store Age
Retail Should Have a Holly Jolly Holiday Season
The National Retail Federation (NRF) annual holiday spending survey results were released, with a promising outlook for the holiday retail spending season. Consumers surveyed reported they expect to spend an average of $967.13 this year, up 3.4% from last year. Online shopping was listed by consumers as the #1 shopping destination for the first time ever, listed so by 59% of those surveyed. The NRF also noted it expects retail sales in November and December to be up by almost 4% over last year, for a total between $678 billion and $682 billion.
The survey also reports that gift cards remain the #1 popular item on wish lists. This is followed by clothing and accessories at 55%, which is the highest level that category has seen in over a decade. Other popular categories include consumer electronics at 33%, home décor at 24% and home improvement items at 18%. While 59% will shop online, 57% say they will shop at a department store, 54% at a discount store and 35% at a clothing or accessories store.
The survey showed that with regard to holiday spending only 27% are concerned about the impact of the nation’s economy, which is down 32% from last year.
Source: Chain Store Age
Buying Handbags on eBay after National Handbag Day?
eBay is offering a new service called eBay Authenticate, to protect shoppers from buying high-end luxury handbag brands that could turn out to be counterfeit. The service will verify the authenticity of luxury handbags and wallets across 12 brands, including Burberry, Chanel, Christian Dior, Louis Vuitton and Prada. For items valued at $500 or more, eBay will collect 20% of the purchase price and the seller receives 80%. As a special kick-off to the service, eBay will offer the service for luxury handbags valued at $250 or more, claiming 10% of the final sale. eBay wants to provide their consumers with confidence they are receiving real merchandise from these brands. A handbag is purchased in the US on eBay every 13 seconds. Sellers who want to participate should still see profits of more than twice what they can get on other online selling sites, even after giving eBay a cut for the service. Sellers send eBay the handbag and experts at eBay will verify authenticity, then photograph, list, sell and ship the handbag to the buyer. eBay is considering expansion of the service to other brands and categories next year.
Sources: Chain Store Age, eBayinc.com
Post-Hurricane Retail Sales Grow in September
The National Retail Federation (NRF) released a report that retail sales increased 0.5% in September over August, with year-over-year sales growing 3.2%. The US Department of Commerce reported retail sales in September at $483.9 billion. Total sales for July through September rose 3.9% over 2016. These increases were attributed mainly to sales in building materials and supplies, which were up 2.1% over August, after the recovery after the 
Accelerated Analytics reports on Retail Sales by Sector and several other key retail industry metrics each month in our Retail Industry Briefing book. We provide the RIBB for free to our customers, partners and members of the retail community. Click HERE to subscribe.
Source: Chain Store Age
Lowe’s Hiring in Florida to Help Hurricane Irma Recovery
As part of a plan to help communities recover from the damage of Hurricane Irma, Lowe’s will be hiring over 3,000 new employees across the state of Florida. This week Lowe’s Home Improvement Stores will hire 200 new employees in the Tampa Bay area alone. The hiring includes seasonal, part-time and full-time workers with positions spanning throughout the stores: cashiers, loaders, customer service, delivery drivers and sales specialists in flooring, millwork, lawn and garden, appliances and pro services. Lowe’s already committed over $1M to disaster relief and recovery from the hurricane last month. This was after also committing $1M after Hurricane Harvey. Lowe’s already employs 19,000 in Florida.
Sources: WFLA.com, TampaBay.com, PR Newswire