Homebase, a British home improvement retailer and horticultural centre, has announced a partnership with grocery giant Tesco to bring its products to its UK stores.
The first store will open in Borehamwood on March 19, followed by Walkden and Woolwich in April.
Online shopping and offline pick-up service will allow customers to place orders on the Homebase website and pick them up within an hour.
Damian McGloughlin, CEO of Homebase, said: “We are very pleased to work with Tesco to bring our home and horticultural products and expertise to more local communities.”
“We are always looking for ways to make it easier for customers to shop with us, and working with Tesco means we can do that.”
Last year, eight Homebase Garden centres were opened in Next stores in Southampton, Norwich, Shoreham, Ipswich, Warrington, Campbury, Bristol and Sheffield.
In March, three other pop-up stores were opened in North Shields, Solihull and High Wycombe.
Inditex, the parent company of Spanish fashion giant Zara, reported a surge in annual sales and profits.
Sales of Inditex, which operates two fashion chains, Pull&Bear and Zara, rose 36 per cent last year to 27.7 billion euros, up 3 per cent from 2019 and a net drop of 2 per cent.
According to Inditex, it will increase the retail prices of its brands in the near future according to its cost inflation rate. The prices of its spring and summer series have risen this year as the cost of raw materials has affected the business.
Joann, a well-known American handicraft chain, is facing the challenge of increasing freight costs and other supply chain disruptions in its first full year as a listed company.
Analysts had expected earnings of 98 cents a share. Net profit increased by $371.7 million compared with the same period two years ago.
Net sales fell 12.5 per cent to $735.3 million, exceeding expectations. Comparable total sales fell by 12.4%. In the two-year stack, total comparable sales increased by 6.0%.
Full-year net sales rose 7.9 per cent to $2.4 billion, compared with two years ago, and comparable sales increased by 8.3 per cent.
Wade Miquelon, chief executive of Joann, said in a statement that the company had faced “significant supply chain headwinds and disruptions” over the past year, including fully absorbing nearly $60 million in shipping costs.
Despite the challenges, Joann’s income is 8 per cent higher than it was before COVID-19 ‘s outbreak, he added.
Currently, Joann operates 848 stores in 49 states.
DFS, a British furniture chain, reported a decline in sales and profits this year compared with strong comparable sales during last year’s commercial blockade.
Compared with last year, the company’s pre-tax profit fell 70 per cent to £22 million in the 26 weeks to December 26, while sales fell 2 per cent to £561 million.
Donna Morris, chief human resources officer of Wal-Mart, a leading US supermarket, recently wrote that after two years of strong expansion, Wal-Mart is hiring 50000 employees in the United States, including stores, Sam’s Club, supply chain facilities and campus staff.
Suresh Kumar, Wal-Mart’s chief technology officer, said the retailer’s global technology team was also hiring and planned to bring in 5000 new employees worldwide and build new company centres in Toronto and Atlanta.
For the technical team, Wal-Mart is looking for network security professionals, architects, developers, software engineers, data scientists, data engineers, technical project managers and product managers. The size of the team grew by 26% last year, Mr. Kumar said
As consumers give priority to environmental sustainability, Target, a well-known supermarket in the United States, has launched stores designed to use less energy than to produce. Target’s first net zero energy store will open in Vista, California.
This new Target store will serve as an innovative testing venue to provide information for future store designs.
“this store can help us test some features so that we can achieve our larger goal of 100% renewable power,” Rachel Swanson, Target’s solar project manager, said in a statement.
Arget has also set other environmental goals. For example, the company has promised to make all its own-brand products “designed for a cyclical future” by 2040.
To that end, the retailer says it plans to use more recyclable, durable and sustainably purchased materials.
Earlier this month, Target said it would display its Target Zero logo on a variety of personal care, beauty and household items designed to be refillable, reusable or compostable, made of recycled materials or materials that reduce plastic demand.
In addition to this concept, Target currently installs LED lights in its store fleet, adds electric vehicle charging stations in more than 150 locations, and introduces recycling and composting programs.