walmart

How Wal-Mart is saving millions with clean tech

The Cleantech Forum that took place in Toronto this week had an interesting guest--Rand Waddoups, senior director of corporate strategy and sustainability at Wal-Mart, who regaled the audience with a pretty interesting array of facts and figures on the retailer's green push, according to Cleantech's news site.

Wal-Mart started to revamp its practices and become more green two years ago. The campaign revolves around good public relations, but also cutting costs. When you managed millions of square feet of retail space, small changes add up.

Some of the results:

The company is saving $1 million a year on … Read more

Consultants urge Wal-Mart to regress

Wal-Mart has stumbled a bit of late, losing its technology-driven lead over competitors and causing some, like Nick Carr, to suggest that Wal-Mart is a prime example of why IT really doesn't matter. Suddenly, consultants are being heard who suggest that Wal-Mart reverse its technology direction to buy off-the-shelf proprietary systems:

...[A]nalysts say that Wal-Mart's reliance on homegrown IT systems - and its conviction of their superiority - needs to change. Ford and his team, they say, must bring in best-of-breed commercial applications, such as BI and price-optimization tools, that can help it compete with rising retail superstars such as Target, JCPenney and Tesco. "We cannot overestimate how much packaged software can help them right now," says Paula Rosenblum, an analyst and managing partner with Retail Systems Research.

In fact, they can. The only thing that proprietary software gives Wal-Mart is bloat for these overpaid consultants to trim away for them. There is no off-the-shelf software that Wal-Mart can buy and use without extreme customization. Absolutely none.… Read more

Toshiba romancing Warner to date HD DVD exclusively?

First, Paramount and DreamWorks Animation get bought off to go HD DVD exclusive. Now word is Toshiba's trying to romance Warner into flipping. The only problem is Sony's doing its best to seduce the last dual-format studio into exclusively shacking up with Blu-ray.

This lurid next chapter in our favorite little tech soap opera comes to us by way of The Digital Bits, which links to an L.A. Times story (also printed in Newsday) that suggest serious bucks are being dangled by both Toshiba and Sony to win Warner's affections. Wal-Mart's in the mix, too, … Read more

Michael Dell talks consumers, retail strategy

SAN FRANCISCO--Though he was in town to discuss Dell's new storage products for small and medium-size business customers, company founder and CEO Michael Dell also took time to answer questions about the company's main business, PC sales, which is also an area in which it's recently struggled.

Dell reiterated his company's assertion that there will be more to come of its recent dabblings in selling desktops and notebooks through retail channels.

"We're going to expand to a number of places," he said. "I would expect over the next quarters you'll see … Read more

Cheap and inconvenient.

Carl Howe at Blackfriar's Marketing points out the problems with Wal-Mart's supposed bid to unseat iTunes.

The result: customers are likely to cherry-pick low-cost tracks at Wal-Mart when they can, but any large-scale defections from iTunes or even Amazon just aren't going to happen without a lot more marketing work.

Howe notes that Wal-Mart has a thinner selection and requires Windows Media to even browse its collection but he doesn't mention the biggest problem, possibly just because it's so obvious.

It's just not a convenient way to get songs onto your iPod.

As Michael Gartenberg says:… Read more

New pair of Pentaxes

Pentax very quietly announced two new cameras late yesterday. The first, an 8MP model called the Optio Z10, marks new territory for Pentax with a sliding lens cover that moves sideways and, like the sliding covers on Sony cameras, turns the camera on and off. Sony often gets credit for the sliding lens cover design in digital cameras, but many compact film cameras incorporated sliding lens covers years before Sony started using them in its digital cameras.

While those film cameras often had mechanical issues due to their extending zoom lenses, this Pentax has an internally zooming refraction lens. The … Read more

Sony LCDs exclusive to Target now available online

As expected, Sony is selling exclusive models of its LCD televisions through discount retailer Target right now.

Though not available in stores until mid-September, Target.com shows a 26-inch and 32-inch Bravia 720p LCD on its site right now for $799 and $899, respectively. Both are significantly cheaper (and smaller) than the other Sony TVs Target carries.

Walmart.com is next, followed by availability in Wal-Mart Stores next month, according to a Sony representative.

The electronics maker revealed its discount retailer plan in June. Randy Waynick, senior vice president of marketing, said Sony would supply a unique series of models … Read more

Xbox 360 price drop for real this time?

E3 came and went, and while another company announced a "price drop," the Internet-wide speculation of Microsoft doing the same at the big show went unmentioned.

Well it seems that these Xbox 360 price-drop suspicions were not completely unfounded; over the weekend it was discovered that multiple retailers will have the Xbox 360 premium listed at $350 beginning in early August--most likely to coincide with the release of Madden 08.

Thanks to Cheap Ass Gamer, we have two scans of predated ads from Wal-Mart and Toys R Us displaying the $50 price cut. It is unclear, however, about whether this will affect the Elite and Core versions of the console as well.

Check out the Wal-Mart ad scan after the jump.… Read more

Apple's iTunes overtakes Amazon in overall music sales

Strong holiday sales helped Apple's iTunes push past Amazon and take third place in overall music sales during the first quarter, according to a new report.

A spike in iPod sales over Christmas drove new device owners to iTunes, and helped Apple grab 9.8 percent of the overall music market, according to the report, issued Friday by the NPD Group.

Amazon came in fourth with a 6.7 share, according to NPD's figures. Wal-Mart was tops in the quarter with 15.8 percent and runner-up Best Buy snagged 13.8 percent.

Apple managed to capture a larger … Read more