Howard Davidowitz Quotes (91 Quotes)

Sears is a shaken-up company, and who knows when it will recover, ... are wonderful.

I think the advertisers are going to go away. She's tarnished. And in looking to the future will she plead guilty If you're an advertiser, you're facing a woman who may go on trial.

The brand as we know it is dead. Any brand that's built exclusively around a single personality can't survive something like this.

They were a failed company, and they were resuscitated, and now Children's Place is the gold standard in children's merchandising in the United States.

Food companies need to listen to the whispers before they become roars. If they're not careful, certain types of food could be legislated off the shelf.

Sears is an American institution that's getting beaten up, ... The company is trying everything it can to stay in business but it's still losing market share everywhere.

They are a small brand. They are not a monster brand. The name of the game for them is to build brand awareness and market share.

The big picture is that we're a debtor nation but remain the most profligate spenders,

One big difference was that last year retailers kept promotions under tight control. Things were more panicky this year.

SARS has not stopped factories from rolling out products in China, ... The only effect it's had on U.S. businesses is that it has led to fewer visits from buyers to the region. So there have been less face-to-face meetings between buyers and suppliers, but companies have gotten around that by teleconferencing.

Back-to-school has been very soft and therefore prices are coming down. The discount signs are already being made. Both Wal-Mart and Target have had anemic growth over the summer. The only sector that has done well is luxury.

Specialty apparel is a very fast-moving business. It's also a fickle business of fashion and creativity where the winners are those retailers who can constantly reinvent themselves and their products.

The business is getting smaller -- the advertising, the TV, the magazine -- everything is going down. This company is not going to go away tomorrow. However, the losses are getting scary.

You see the guy out on the street selling coffee, donuts, fruit - his business is destroyed. There are a lot of small businesses that will close or that won't be able to pay their bills next year because of the strike.

The growth of lifestyle centers is absolutely tied to the strong performance of the luxury sector.

When it's all over, I expect holiday sales to be flat to up 1 percent, which would be the lowest reading since 1990. That's what I see for Christmas.

In the toy industry, about 60 percent of the independent retailers have already gone out of business.

So there's no sense on Federated spending time turning things around at Lord Taylor when the main event for Federated is the integration of May stores.

If you've got one name, Macy's, you can save a tremendous amount of money in supplies, marketing cost, advertising umbrella, promotions. You enhance your margin because you're buying more. It's just a fantastic way to do things,

As a negotiating strategy, I would assume Saks is trying to package the whole thing -- to sell the good with the bad.

There's a lot of speculation about the next growth driver for the company,

I think the real story last month was that in spite of higher interest rates, exploding energy costs and debt levels, the American consumer rolls on.

That may also mean more choice for consumers. Within the retail industry Federated is known for catering to the classes and May to the masses, ... For the May customer, it's an opportunity to get more upscale merchandise that a Bloomingdales' customer is familiar with.

May has paid a crazy amount of money for what many think is a declining asset, ... Not all of the Marshall Field's locations make sense to May, especially in areas where the Field's stores overlap with its stores. I think the company will try to recoup some of that money, the hefty premium it paid for the chain.

There's a tremendous profit margin on the tchotchkes they're selling and I understand the appeal of that. But the most valuable thing that Tiffany has is their brand name. You can't be everything to everybody.

has been trying very hard to do that for a long time. So far they have been left with a giant loss of market share.

Stuckey's strategy would be to take a plain low-priced product like jeans and embellish it with design. Suddenly it becomes a 'fashion' jeans and appeals to a new ethnic audience. It's the same strategy with 7,

The performance of the company over the last few years has been very erratic. It's also a smaller player. It was time for Milstein to take it easy and make a gigantic pot of money and turn the ball over to someone else.

The bigger issue for the entire retail space is that we have a weak economy, unemployment is rampant, corporate spending is down and corporate earnings are not improving.

Lord Taylor was already a troubled division and it was in the middle of changing it's image from older to younger, but this wasn't bearing fruit.

You can see clearly how the terror attacks have affected the American psyche. People are staying more at home, spending more time with the family and eating out at restaurants. At the same time, anecdotal evidence shows that sales of products such as flashlights, candles, first-aid kits has boomed.

There's no way to make up for the lost business. It's gone.

When you're a cash cow like Federated, you should invest in a growth business and not another buggy whip company.

In next couple of years, the deal puts PG at a disadvantage. They'll be inwardly focused. The integration challenge here is massive. That's an opportunity for competitors.

He really knows the shopping center business from the ground up,

Also, most big retail chains placed their Christmas orders months ago and the Christmas inventory was already in the pipeline before (the) SARS (outbreak),

Kmart said it closed its worst performing stores because it couldn't maintain inventory once its vendors cut themselves off. Now that the stores are shuttered and inventory is up, Kmart is still doing less business than before. The company is still losing money and market share. I'm not sure the company can get past Christmas.

We've been in a complicated marriage with the French for over 50 years now, and we'll be married to them forever,

The company's only chance to move to a new chapter is to have a roadmap of everything that's going to happen with Martha, ... The company is set up for her to come back. The question is, what role should she come back in

The message that Martha Stewart's publicity team sent (Wednesday) was, 'Won't it be wonderful that she's coming back and will be running the company' ... But how will that happen It's going to be very tricky.

For me, the big question is what is Wal-Mart going to do to improve sales,

I think its a brilliant strategy. Make small improvements that will boost sales even 4 to 5 percent over the next few years and that could lead to a dramatic turnaround for the company,

Of course retailers don't want rain today. It just sours the mood of shoppers. But if there's stuff that people really want to buy today, they'll still go out and get it,

May is known as a retailer for the masses and Federated for the classes. The only upscale part of the Marshall Field's deal are these Chicago stores. I think Federated would pay through its nose to acquire these locations and it would do a much better job running them.

There's no question about it, ... There is so much publicity about obesity in America. You hear politicians talking about it daily. You even hear the president of the United States talking about it as a growing concern.

It's a train wreck. The company is headed south. If this goes on too long, there will be no more company.

The most important people who have to be motivated are the store employees they're your life blood. Federated knows this.

When a company has bad performance and new owners, look for musical chairs,

Sears said it's giving back about 4 billion from the sale to its shareholders in buybacks and a dividend increase. This is crazy. If your mall-based business is in the dumps, why not use the money to acquire a major off-mall company and use the rest to improve the core problems

Kohl's is struggling badly. Not only are the not meeting sales targets, there are several questions swirling about recent management changes,