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Over the past week, we surveyed various Shoe Carnival locations to gauge trends in the sales of retail shoes. We asked the following questions:

1. What’s currently the best-selling shoe brand for teenage shoppers?

2. What’s the most requested brand/item that you don’t carry?

3. Has store traffic increased, decreased, or stayed the same during the past few weeks?

4. Does there seem to be more or less items on sale this month versus last month?

5. How much does the average customer spend on shoes?

 

• Nike is the best-selling teenage brand according to 92% of respondents. 8% say it is Sketchers and another 4% report it as Converse and Solanz.

• The survey shows that Adidas and Reebok were requested by customers (each cited by 8% of respondents). Another 44% say that no out-of-stock brands are requested at Shoe Carnival.

• 44% of respondents say that store traffic have increased during the past few weeks. 36% say it has been the same, while 20% say store traffic has decreased.

• 52% of respondents say that Shoe Carnival has more sales this month compared to last month, while 48% say there is less.

• The average shoe shopper spends $66.49 per spree at this store.

 

Conclusion of Channel Check: Shoe Carnival’s best selling and most requested shoe by teenagers is Nike, according to 92% of respondents. Shoe Carnival seems to have their customers need covered since no out-of-stock brands are requested. Their sales haven’t increased much compared to last month so their business has been fairly constant.

 

 

For access to the underlying survey or for more information, please contact Jason Katz at 415.867.0959 or jason@thechannelcheckers.com

We are helping to promote a new service called TickerGraph.

TickerGraph is a site that relates a company’s customers and suppliers instantly so that you can see the full extent of impact from events like earnings, new product releases, M&A news, etc. instantly in one spot.

Over the next two weeks as the product comes live in a “beta” form anyone can access the service for a free test drive using the following log in credentials:

Username: alpha

Password: alpha

Yes, small caps please on the log in. So check it out at www.tickergraph.com

If you have any questions on this service I can help you out. Just e-mail casey@thechannelcheckers.com or anyone else here on our team.

Over the past week, we surveyed 30 Walmart stores across the United States to track sales trends of and business levels in March. We asked the following questions

 

1. Do you think the weak housing market and weak economy are hurting business at your location?

2. What is the top selling brand of women’s clothing right now?

3. How is business at you store currently?

4. Do you have excess inventory of any particular product or brand of product that will go on sale or discount soon?

 

• Surprisingly only 40% of respondents stated that the weak housing market or the weak economy overall was hurting business at their store location. 60% said these macro factors were not affecting sales at their store location. This is a very similar result to our survey results from Target stores.

• Faded Glory was the top selling women’s brand according to 23% of respondents. 20% said it was Danskin Hoodies while 16% said Norma Komali was the top women’s brand. .

• Another major surprise (also seen in our Target Survey) in this survey was that 37% of respondents reported business as “Very Strong” at their store location while another 40% said business was “Above Average”. 17% reported business “Average” and 7% reported business as “Below Average”.

• 30% of respondents did confirm their was excess inventory of some items like toys, Valentine’s Day items and electronics like TV’s. 70% said there was not any excess inventory at their store location.

 Conclusion of Channel Check: The data in this report is surprising when compared to the broader economic news in the market today. The business levels appear to be strong compared to our historical surveys on Walmart and other big box retailers. The impact of negative housing also seems to be shrinking at least in the employees perceptions. Faded Glory ( a Walmart store brand) scored very strongly in this survey.

 For access to the underlying survey or for more information, please contact Jason Katz at 415.867.0959 or jason@thechannelcheckers.com

 

The Channel Checkers surveyed 50 Macco auto body shops across the U.S and 50 oil and transmission stations like Jiffy Lube’s and Pep Boys. The well documented fall in new car sales in might suggest that business would be increasing for the auto maintenance and repair market.

The Channel Checkers found that 50% of Maaco locations contacted reporting that business was down over the past few months, while 44% business had remained steady. Only 6% reported an increase in business levels. 56% of respondents reported that customers were now more likely to pay for major body work at a Maaco location as customers were trying to maintain resale values for their vehicles and wanted to forestall purchasing a new vehicle as long as possible. In another tip to the economic difficulties facing Maaco clients, it appears that more customers are opting to use insurance for repairs, despite the hit they are likely to take on future insurance premiums which rise as claims are made for damage to cars.

At the big oil change locations like Jiffy Lube, PepBoys and PitStop The Channel Checkers found that while business had slowed somewhat the incidence of minor repairs appears to be increasing. 62% of respondents reported seeing an increasing in minor repairs as consumers look to keep their cars running as well and for as long as possible without incurring major expenses. 76% of oil change locations reported seeing increased usage of coupons or promotions for oil changes and other routine maintenance services. This statistic is supported by our Maaco survey where 66% of those respondents were seeing increased usage of coupons and promotions.

While business appears to be steady or slowing for the automotive care and repair service stations our surveys suggest that as cars are stretched further into their useful lives that the flow of drivers seeking minor repairs and even major repairs to postpone the purchase of a new vehicle is likely to increase. The Channel Checkers will be repeating this survey in July and August to track the changes in car owner behavior as the summer and economic malaise continue.

Kohl’s Corp., the US department store chain, is having a reasonable year so far in spite of an overall sluggish retail sector. We interviewed 30 stores across the nation and asked how business was, whether there was any excess inventory, is the weak economy and housing market jinxing business and which women’s fashion line sells best? Of the 30 respondents, five or 16.6% described business as very strong. Twelve or 40% found it above average and 13 or 43.3% found business average. Ten respondents or 33.3% reported having no excess inventory while four respondents or 13.3% reported having some, namely in winter clothing which is typically discounted in spring. The majority of those polled, 13 or 43.3%, weren’t sure whether the housing market and weak economy were effecting business but seven respondents or 23.3% saw either some impact now or potential future impact. Only ten or 33.3 % said the markets had no bearing on sales at all. Women’s apparel sales ran the gamete from Apt. 9, the dress casual line ranking as the best seller with five respondents or 16.6%. Croft & Barrow, the outerwear and sleepwear line tied with Sonoma, the lifestyle line with four respondents or 13.3% while Vera Wang, Levis and Daisy Fuentes, which makes accessories, swimwear and casual wear brought in three responses or 10%. Chaps, the career and slinky evening wear line ranked bottom with two respondents or 6.6%.

Chipotle Grill is a hot topic these days with a massive valuation and a market segment in between casual dining and fast food.  How is the chain doing and what are customers looking to get there? We surveyed 30 stores to take a look.

Our most recent survey of Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurants shows that a whopping 80% of respondents indicated that customers choose Chipotle because of the menu, compared with 9% because the food is organic and 11% who cited both the menu and the organic food as the reason. The star of the menu that keeps them coming in is the Burrito, chosen 57% of the time; varieties ordered included chicken (41%), steak (29%), barbacoa (12%) and carnitas (6%). The Burrito Bowl was the second most frequently ordered item (26%) followed by Fajita Burritos (14%) and Tacos (3%). The average check size for a party of two is $23.83. More respondents (74%) indicate that the restaurants are crowded at lunch time than reported that dinner had the bigger crowds (26%). Compared to a year ago, 43% of sites reported that the restaurant is busier, 46% say it is the same and 6% say it is less busy. Restaurants less than a year old made up 26% of the responses with older restaurants representing 74%.

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 recently completed a survey on best selling USB drive brands. USB flash drives seem to be a growing trend for off-PC storage for personal and corporate use. In an article at SeekingAlpha  Avi Ifergan claims that “SanDisk is the dominant player in all markets it has entered. It has approximately 42% market share in North America; In Europe, it doubled its market share in the last 12 months to 28% and indicated that it is experiencing difficulties in meeting European demand; in Asia and Australia market share is 23%.”

Our just completed survey reveals that Sandisk was cited as the top selling brand by 37% of our respondents down somewhat from the published 42% number (which we believe Avi pulled from NPD group research.)   Kingston was a very strong number two as it was cited as the best selling brand by 26% of all respondents.  HP did surprisingly well from our perspective and garnered top selling mentions from 19% of our respondents.  These answers we believe could be favoring the HP brand in total as opposed to being objective about just UBS drives.  We called into many office and consumer elelectronics stores which all do significant business in HP products as a family including computers, printers and peripherals besides USB drives.

Memorex (11%) PNY (7%), Tanscend (4%) and Sony (4%) were also mentioned by some survey respondents as the best selling USB drive brand.