Brian Sozzi of Belus Capital Advisors spent last weekend at just about every major retailer, checking out their Black Friday / holiday weekend offerings. Here are his thoughts on several of the places he visited:
1. Toys R Us is in big trouble. Prices on toys are simply under pressure due to online stores and a shift in what defines a children’s toy.
2. Sears and Kmart (SHLD) will have ugly holiday quarters. The stores had way too much excess inventory in key holiday categories by the end of the weekend.
Related: Holiday retail winners and losers
3. Webstore infrastructure is not equipped to handle 'ship from store' initiatives and more mobile shopping. The perfect example is Best Buy’s (BBY) site outage. I wouldn’t be surprised if we get more site outages before the season is done.
4. Good to see stocked shelves at Walmart (WMT), finally. It was also a good sign for the mega-retailer to see tidy looking stores the day after Black Friday. I am no Walmart fan, but stocked shelves is something I will be monitoring moving forward as it could lead to same-store sales improvements. But not all is well in Walmart-ville. Their electronics section is not structurally set up to handle 4K TV demand or customer service. No one is there to answer questions about the technology. For that, it's Best Buy or bust.
5. Over time, I think it will be proven that Apple (AAPL) stole its Beats acquisition. Holiday deals on Beats is putting the product into the hands of Main Street, and giving Apple a chance to upsell as new models roll out (as it does for the iPhone, etc.)
6. I Like the increasingly new look of Target (TGT) stores, specifically new shops in the electronics section.
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7. Coach (COH) has fundamental problems, basically the choices are new bags from a new designer or still pretty lame. Winner: Michael Kors (KORS).
8. Nike (NKE) over Under Armour (UA). The swoosh had better placement and assortments in Dick’s Sporting Goods (DKS) and Macy’s (M).
9. Kohl's (KSS) had a poor start to holiday season. I don’t care what a few analysts have said. After visiting two stores on Black Friday I know what I saw: unsold inventory in a good bit of store visits.
10. People may have saved up two years to splurge as they did in the past four days.
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