Neil Stern Quotations

Every retailer is looking to generate more trips. It's certainly not a profit driver; it's being used as a traffic driver.

It's perceptually indicative of how a brand is performing. If it's going down, that means their satisfaction is going down.

If you do that kind of advertising, you better be able to execute at the store level. If you don't, you're really going to lose those customers.

It's almost a throwback concept. They're very clean stores. They're wholesome; very much focused on comfort food. They have very much a family orientation; a good mix of families and young kids.

What they are finding so far internationally, is that when they have gone into a country and acquired or partnered with a successful established retailer they have done very well.

In one deal, it makes Supervalu a major national player.

What they've done is buy themselves some time. The challenge is, how long does it last? If you're still losing sales, those stores that are profitable today won't be profitable tomorrow.

Tommy Hilfiger came in and created 300 shops. Now every one of the department store anchors has a Tommy shop and a Liz shop. It gave vendors more control, and it also was a real estate grab. There was no real defined reason to go to Marshall Field's because it has X, X and X that Carson's doesn't have.

The volume is there, but the chain stores have to adapt their practices.

Their format is not only capital-intensive, it's people-intensive. Literally, they can't train people fast enough. Even if they have access to capital, from a human resources standpoint, they can't grow any faster.