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Retailer News

Ceconomy and Fnac Darty Put Alliance on "Pause"

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Ceconomy and Fnac Darty Put Alliance on

Ceconomy, the parent company of MediaMarkt and Saturn, delays plans to form a partnership with Fnac Darty, since it first wants to find a solution for ongoing financial troubles.

“We have hit pause,” the retailer tells Reuters.

The two retailers announced plans for a purchasing alliance back in May 2018. Dubbed a "European Retail Alliance," the aim of the partnership was to bring further efficiencies through strategic agreements with key suppliers, private label sourcing, licensing agreements and data collaboration activities. The result, the two retailers hoped, would bring about a network open for CE retailers across Europe, one leading to exclusive products and services.

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Dixons Carphone Losses Reach £440 Million

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Dixons Carphone Losses Reach £440 Million

Dixons Carphone losses reach £440 million for fiscal H1 2018 (ending 27 October 2018)-- a far cry from the profits of £54m from a year before, and essentially the result of getting hit by charges reaching £490m.

One chunk of said charges is the £225m write-off at the loss-making Carphone Warehouse wing of the business. And that was just one part of a difficult 2018 for the retailer, one that saw it lose both CEO Sebastian James and CFO Humphrey Singer, store closures and a data breach affecting no less than 10 million customers.

However CEO Alex Baldock has a plan to turn Dixons Carphone fortunes around-- one he says will bring savings of at least £200m, all without job losses. Instead the savings will come from a merger of IT systems and reductions in supplier costs. In addition, employees get the opportunity to become Dixon Carphone shareholders through a share awards program.

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Freenet Commits to Ceconomy Investment

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Freenet Commits to Ceconomy Investment

German telco Freenet confirms commitment to a June 2018 investment in CE retailer Ceconomy, despite back-to-back profit warnings bringing about the departure of CEO Pieter Haas earlier last month.

“I still believe in the company,” Freenet CEO Christoph Vilanek tells Reuters, before insisting the company will stick to the 9% stake in Ceconomy. Freenet acquired part of Ceconomy-- worth $323.9 million-- through a rights issue. Vilanek adds the investment was made not in the name of growing share prices, but in order to use the stores to sell more mobile phone contracts, and believes individual stores should have more freedom while doing more to centralise logistics and warehouses.

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LG Helps Customers With Self-Driving Shopping Carts

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LG Helps Customers With Self-Driving Shopping Carts

According to LG, the future of retail is robotic-- the S. Korean company plans to put robots to work at the largest supermarket chain in the country, E-Mart, in the shape of self-driving shopping carts.

Developed by the LG lab responsible for a number of robots released under the CLOi brand, the shopping cart robots promise to "free visitors from the hassle of pushing heavy carts by themselves." The company says the robots will follow shoppers as they walk through the aisles, automatically avoiding obstacles along the way.

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Gartner: Retailers Invest "Heavily" in Digital

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Gartner: Retailers Invest

According to Gartner, customer expectations and competition force retailers to "invest heavily" in digital business transformation-- leading to global retail sector technology spend reaching $203.6 billion in 2019, a 3.6% increase.

The analyst says retail, compared to other industries, used to be a "laggard" in terms of appetite for change, digital maturity and technology spend. But not any more, since retail now surpasses most industries with regard to IT spend. Software is the fastest growing category of technology spending, with retail CIOs prioritising digital marketing, mobile applications, eCommerce platforms and AI, technologies deemed most crucial to their organisation.

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Google Plans Chicago Retail Location?

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Google Plans Chicago Retail Location?

According to the Chicago Tribune and Crain's Chicago Business, Google is set to reveal a first permanent brick-and-mortar store-- a location in Chicago's Fulton Market district, just a few blocks away from the Google Midwest HQ.

The two sources state the company is finalising a lease on a 1300 square-metre property in the district. Formerly a meatpacking district, Fulton Market is part of the Chicago West Loop and has housed Google Midwest since 2015. The office currently employs 900 employees at the location, and Crain's Chicago Business reports Google plans to expand it by as much as 9290 square-metres in the near future.

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Apple Opens Milan Piazza Liberty Store

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Apple Opens Milan Piazza Liberty Store

Apple sets to revitalise a piazza in the centre of Milan with Apple Piazza Liberty-- a Store in the centre of the Italian city promising to bring the latest in Apple retail design to the country for the first time.

Located off Corso Vittorio Emanuele, one of the most popular pedestrian streets in Milan, the store has an entrance complete with dramatic glass fountain serving as backdrop a large outdoor amphitheatre. The piazza is clad in Beola Grigia, a stone used throughout Milan, is open 24 hours a day and hosts special events year-round.

Among the events held at the Store piazza is Today at Apple, free hourly sessions on creative topics, such as photography, filmmaking, music creation, coding and design. Another is the Milan Series, a set of talks by 21 local artists taking place on September 2018.

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Dixons Carphone Hack Bigger than First Thought

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Dixons Carphone Hack Bigger than First Thought

Just two months ago Dixons Carphone admitted it was hacked in July 2017, leading to the leak of 5.9 million payment cards and 1.2m personal data records. Now the retailer states the data breach was even bigger, involving no less than 10 million customers.

The Carphone Warehouse and Currys PC World owner says the personal data includes names, addresses and email addresses. However it insists no bank records were included, and so far no evidence ponts to fraud resulting from the breach. As for the 5.9m payment cards, all but 105000 cards are protected by the chip and PIN system, meaning the attackers cannot access full card records from compromised databases.

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Dixons Carphone Profit Warning Leads to Store Closures

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Dixons Carphone Profit Warning Leads to Store Closures

Dixons Carphone announces the closure of 92 Carphone Warehouse standalone stores as the retailer issues a profits warning in the face of a shrinking market and changing customer habits.

"[W]e’ll work hard to improve our cost efficiency," CEO Alex Baldock tells investors. "We won’t tolerate our current performance in mobile, or as a Group. We know we can do a lot better...  There’s so much more to come from Dixons Carphone, though plenty of hard work lies ahead.

"The store closings comes as the retailer reports fiscal Q4 growth of just 1% Y-o-Y in the UK & Ireland, the result of a softer computing market. Dixons Carphone does see stronger performance on the international side, with revenue growth reaching 8% in the Nordics and 10% in Greece. The two regions also see "record levels of market share," as well as an increase in market leadership and operating margins.

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