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We completed a survey of a broad range of retail outlets that sell Steve Madden boots and shoes during December. We found that the trend for boots was up due to the winter season was almost unanimous among respondents.

We found that 60% of respondents reported that Steve Madden brand boots were selling better than competing brands. 63% of respondents reported that Steve Madden shoes outsell competing brands. 10% of respondents said that Steven Madden brand boots were selling less well than competitors while 21% of respondents stated that Steve Madden shoes sold less well than competing brands. It appears that Steve Madden boots and shoes are viewed consistently by retail store employees with the exception that the competition for sales appears tougher for Steve Madden brand shoes than for its boot line.

We have recently conducted a survey on Sears and Kmart stores in the U.S. which are owned collectively under the banner of Sears Holdings (SHLD).

We asked about store activity in this survey and 20% of respondents reported that stores were “less busy”. 20% negative response to questions in our survey is reason for concern given that traditionally store employees tend to be more positive or optimistic about retail store activity.

In addition to our temperature check on store activity we asked if the Sears and Kmart locations would be having PRE-CHRISTMAS sales and the answer across the board was yes. We also asked if there was excess inventory of items and the answer to this according to over 70% of respondents was “yes, excess inventory”.

The top selling items at Sears and Kmart locations were flat screen TV’s (25%), video games and video game consoles (20%) and Craftsman tools (10%).  We did not see any strong showing for sales of clothing items or for consumer durables like washers and dryers.  We believe that the heavy dose of electronics being sold at Sears could produce lower profit margins as we believe Sears is selling these items below the leading electronics retailers to help bring in business for these items.

We are working on asking Geek Squad locations within the Best Buy retail chain how long it takes them to come and perform an in-home visit.  We had learned that the average time had dropped to about 3 days down from 6 days previously.  We thought we would check it out.

Our survey did reveal that the average time for an in-home visit was about 3-days across the Geek Squad population we surveyed. Some were as long as 6 days still and a few as short as 1 day.  What is more interesting to us is whether these in-home appointment times were faster or slower than six months ago. The answer according to 42% of our respondents was faster.  Another third said it was the same and the minority reported it was a slower response time.

We were also interested in knowing why response times had changed (if at all) and what the driver in the changes were. The most common answer (25%) was that there are now more Geek Squad locations and more Geeks staffing these locations. The second most common reason was that some respondents believe the number of customer problems is decreasing with the launch of Vista and that newer computers have fewer problems.  While some technical gurus may find the ease of use of Microsoft products as a dubious driver of a decrease in problems we are inclined to accept the information in our survey.

Overall, faster response times are good for customers and the public perception of the Best Buy Geek Squad. We do not know this translates into greater levels of business for Best Buy itself but we hope to survey the stores and see if they believe the Geek Squad helps to drive increased business to Best Buy stores.

We recently completed a survey or roughly 70 auto dealers asking what cars were selling best for them. Our survey seems to track well with broader press reports about gas prices driving demand for smaller more full efficient vehicles.

We called a wide range of dealer brands from Ford to Suzuki. 72% of these dealerships reported a small car as the best seller as compared to 28% who named a pick-up truck or SUV model as their best seller. Ford dealers continued to report that the F-Series truck line led by the F-150 as the best selling model. 9 out of 11 Ford dealers called reported truck sales as being the top models sold.

Beyond Ford, Toyota Camry’s and Corolla’s were named often as was the Honda Civic. Out of the 16 Toyota dealerships we called 3 listed the Prius as their best seller. Only one Toyota dealer cited a truck model (Toyota Tacoma) as a best seller. Volkswagen dealers reported that Golf’s were best sellers in 50% of their responses with Jetta’s getting the other 50% of responses from VW dealers.

Smaller brands cited small cars as well. Suzuki dealers cited the Reno, Saturn dealers the Ion, the Kia Rio, BMW M3 and the Pontiac G6. Our survey results are unsurprising given the high cost of gas over the past two years. We will revisit this survey in a few months and see if trends reverse or intensify in terms of consumer preferences for small full efficient vehicles.

Our survey on Kohl’s continues with regard to Vera Wang’s new product line. The new information we wanted to communicate was that a kohl’s store in Kentucky cited September 9th as the launch date for the new line, the second store to cite this date.

We also continue to get positive responses from Kohl’s in the Northwest U.S. who report they have the line already in place and are selling Vera Wang items.

We have learned from the more expert retail analysts over at No Turn on Red that a phased deployment of a new product line at Kohl’s might be considered unusual. We do not know but will continue our survey through August to keep folks up on our channel check results.

We caught an article in the Wall Street Journal recently on a new Vera Wang line to be offered at Kohl’s. The article alluded the line being launched in September with an ad campaign beginning at the same time. We decided to start a survey calling Kohl’s and trying to identify the first day of sales for the new line of Vera Wang products.

We have been surprised so far in our survey. 12 of the 25 (48%) stores we have called this week have told us that they already have the Vera Wang line and are selling it. We were told there is a Vera Wang perfume on sale at Kohl’s now too. Many of the stores that have the line appear to be in the Pacific Northwest and the Southeast. Stores in Washington and Oregon and South Carolina and Georgia provided the bulk of our positive responses. We called one store in New York City and they claim to be stocking the line already as well.

13 stores reported that the line would be avaivable in the “fall” generally. At the Kohl’s in Altoona, PA we were told that September 9th would be the first day the line wold be available at that particular store. Stores reporting no to our questions were located in Texas, Ohio, Maryland, Virginia and California.

We also asked if the line was selling well at the stores which claimed to have it in stock. The answers were generally positive although some reps noted that sales were not as strong as hoped, suggesting high expectations. Our take is maybe the early results are very good but not great at the registers. These could all be test markets for the line and the advertising campaign has not even started so we are by no means suggesting the line will disappoint.

Our take is the line may be sneaking into stores early to be in place when the ad blitz hits the airwaves in September and Kohl’s wants to be ready to meet the demand for the new line.

We want to continue to provide diversified surveys for our readers and bring you this very new, very small restaurant concept known as uWink. The restaurants offer video games as the tables and also allow for self ordering over the video game terminal.  It is a new concept and management of uWink formerly ran Atari and Chuck E Cheese.

We called and asked a few brief questions to see how the one restaurant was doing and where any expansions might be heading.  We called the restaurant 8 times over a few days and asked if we needed reservations. The answer was “No” 7 times and “yes” once. Half of our calls were during the day so we would not expect reservations to be needed for lunch generally speaking.

As far as new locations, the staff at uWink offered several insights. Dallas and Miami were mentioned. We believe that the uWink management has publicly stated that a Miami franchisee is expected and the company put out a press release disclosing the new Dallas store.  In addition to these locations, employees we called talked about two new locations to be opened in January 2008.  Potential locations for these two new stores were identified to us as Valencia, Burbank or Northridge.

We have conducted a survey on trends in tea sales at Starbucks. We called 50 Starbucks stores and asked the following questions:

1. Do you sell tea and tea based drinks?

2. Are tea drink sales increasing versus a year ago.

3. If yes to #2, why are tea sales increasing?

The results were interesting. Yes, Starbucks does sell tea, although four respondents said they did not sell tea which suggests something about tea sales at those stores or knowledge of tea sales by those workers. We’ll chalk those up to sampling error and go with the 46 respondents who said yes to these questions.

Tea sales were reported as up against a year ago by 30 out of our 50 respondents. Some respondents cited weather as a reason, like our southeastern U.S. respondent who reported the heat drove up sales of Green Tea Frappucino’s recently. The biggest driver in the pick-up in tea sales was that customers were learning more about the health benefits of tea and were seeking out healthier drink options. The other interesting trend in our survey was that drinking tea was deemed to be more fashionable and a sign of being with “it”. New York City and San Francisco responses cited being fashionable as a driver of increased tea sales.

Tazo Tea’s and Green Tea Frappucino’s were cited as popular tea options at Starbucks and a few barristas we spoke with mentioned that new flavors and drink combinations based on tea were coming out soon. Could Starbucks be moving to capitalize on the tea trend? In the other direction we plan on surveying Starbucks again to track their doughnut offerings as those seem to be spreading as well. Looks like Starbucks could be looking to draw in more of both the health conscious and and the health un-conscious consumers. But for now, we’ll keep our eyes out for new tea options at a Starbucks near you.

We have completed a recent survey on Peet’s Coffee & Tea (PEET) in which we asked two questions we thought relevant to the company’s performance in coming months.

We asked 106 Peet’s employees and representatives across the country.  Peet’s has fewer than 150 stores in total so we ended up calling some stores more than once to ask our questions. First we asked employees if they thought coffee prices would rise in the near term.  Second, we asked what the best selling drink was.

On the topic of coffee prices, 76 respondents said they did not expect coffee prices at Peet’s to rise.  Several employees indicated that there were no internal memos indicating price increases and some employees pointed out that Peet’s has generally paid higher prices for fair trade coffee and is unlikely to be impacted by rises in mass produced coffee if that were to occur.  It appears to us that the majority do not coffee prices increases for Peet’s in the near future.

Our second question on the best selling drink also yielded an obvious first choice. 40 respondents identified the Freddo line of specialty drinks (which happen to be the most expensive on the menu at up to $4.00 per).  The Chocolate Caramel Freddo was mentioned most among the Freddo options and the hook with this drink is that the chocolate used is Sharffen Berger Chocolate, a gourmet out of Berkeley California (Home of Peet’s Coffee as well). Sharffen Berger has been a division of Hershey’s since 2005 but maintains its own branding and market positioning.   The Freddo recommendations may reflect good corporate communication by all the Peet’s employees or the high priced specialty drinks may be flowing rapidly to customers which would seem good for Peet’s financial results.  The second most popular response to our question about the top selling drink was Peet’s regular Anniversary Blend coffee or Arabian Mocha coffee.

Our survey on surf and skate gear maker Volcom is winding down. All the retailers we contacted, which consisted primarily of Pacific Sunwear retail outlets, but some independent surf and skate retailers, rated Volcom highly. The questions we asked were the following:1. What is the best brand of clothing for surf and/or skaters?

2. How is Volcom gear selling this month?

3. What is the store name and location.

Volcom was rated the top brand by the retailer employees in 47% of our calls. Hurley and Quicksilver were ranked as the top brands by 16% of the respondents. Billabong was the top brand according to 11% of our respondents while Reef was mentioned as the best brand down in Miami. Zumiez (ZUMZ) did not score any reccomendations and we heard that there are some problems with the Zumiez distributor (see below) Hurley was mentioned by many repondents as a strong number 2 brand when they rated Volcom number one.

Most of the retailers said that Volcom gear was selling fairly well particularly among young men and teenage boys. Not a big surprise there. Some of the more interesting comments included the following:

“Yes,(Volcom) consistently is the one of the best if not the best, but it is a close race between Volcom and Hurley. Hurley has come out with some new styles in the past season or two that has allowed it to consistently gain ground on Volcom.”

“Hurley is probably the best currently as far as skate AND surf gear. They have consistently the best board shorts and their hoodies/ long sleeve new releases are hot. Hurley is the way to go especially as far as surf gear is concerned. Volcom is a bit more alternative. Hurley also has the best designs in the past few seasons. ”

“The store (an independent surf shop) is not selling any Zumiez gear now due to a problem with the distributor”

Looks good for Volcom particularly with their strong customer - Pacific Sunwear. Hurley appears to be gaining ground and doing very well over all. Zumiez seems to be having some problems from the results of our survey. We will wrap up our survey on Volcom and the surf and skate retail environment later this week. Send us suggestions for more retail checks you would like to see on the site at casey@thechannelcheckers.com

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