DEERFIELD, IL – Walgreens has a nifty new store brand for store-branded groceries. It’s called Nice, and it tries to take a snazzy approach to the basics, including coffee, rice and the like. Notice it’s “TM” rather than “R” on the packages. Interesting choice of a very generic word for products. Do you like Nice? [...]

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For those who like a traditional looking Christmas, there is no substitute to light from incandescent C-7 and C-9 light bulb, and no name more synonymous with Christmas lights than General Electric. One can make the case that the outdoor Christmas light has been one of the greater (and most surreptitious) of methods of evangelism [...]

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Part of the reason I love brands is because I studied them at the Irvington Country Store. When I was 15, in 1979, my father bought a country store in Irvington, Virginia on the Northern Neck. It was a cool country store, and he did the right things with it, including bringing in deli sandwiches [...]

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TOLEDO – In a box of fabric, we found a little label for a dress store called Lamson Brothers. Every town used to have a Lamson Brothers, a stylish local department store that not only sold national labels, but stitched a few of its own labels into wholesale garments to give turn the retail shop [...]

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HOFFMAN ESTATES – As the most iconic and historic retailer in the U.S. and owner of some of America’s greatest brands, Sears, Roebuck & Co. made a major jump into social media with the launch of MySears.com last spring. It now has 1.9 million monthly unique visits; (the Sears.com site has about 19 million). Thin-skinned [...]

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In the UK, companies are fighting over the legacy of Woolworth’s, which was thought to be dead. Not only has the name brand Woolworth’s been purchased by the British online retailer Shop Direct, but a number of companies have purchased individual stores and redone the Woolworth’s concept, with a slightly modified name. In Dorchester England [...]

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HOFFMAN ESTATES, Illinois – Sears Holdings (SHLD) announces earnings today; turns out their second-quarter loss is $94 million, or 79 cents a share, with revenue falling to $10.55 billion from $11.76 billion. I could have guessed it going into their Westfield Sarasota Square store. On our visit, the clerks were friendly. The store maintenance and [...]

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Two name changes-or more correctly, modifications-have received attention in the media and branding worlds recently. Pizza Hut has announced that its boxes and select locations will carry the name “The Hut,” and RadioShack plans to unveil new creative for “The Shack,” its shorter, catchier moniker. These name shortenings are proof of what professional namers already [...]

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SAVANNAH – Entries are just out in the Savannah College of Art & Design’s Phoenix Project. (See a full list of entries here.) At right, the entry for RadioShack (NYSE: RSH) by the student team of Rodrigo Mitma and Josh Finkelstein. Brand Problem: Big-Box and online electronic stores are superior in sales. Research shows that [...]

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We ran across an old record catalog from the 78 era, and noticed that it came from a jewelry store in Norfolk, Virginia. The jewelers D. P. Paul, still (I think) a favorite old-line jeweler in the Norfolk area. Strangely, in 1941, they used to sell records. It made us think. Back then, jewelers sold [...]

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