After an extended absence, this site is being resurrected. Give me a few days, but posts will be starting up soon. There’s a lot of shakeups going on in the retail industry right now and there’s a lot I’d like to comment on. Give me a few days to work out some administrative and development tasks on the back end.
You may have noticed a severe shortage of posts lately. Due to some server issues and business/travel commitments, some posts of mine have not been appearing. I’ll be working on this later today to get the old posts from last week up, but I wanted to say hello and let everyone know that I am still here.
In an effort to learn some new technology and add something new to this website, I have developed a simple application to track and graph retail monthly comp store sales data. Also known as same store sales, this is a measurement of change in sales in stores that have been open for over a year.
Located at http://www.noturnonred.org/charts, the Retail Monthly Comp Sales Charts is a dynamic application using PHP, Ajax, and MySQL. Still in it’s early stages, it will be updated monthly when the new retail numbers are announced. The database currently contains data for approximately 20 retailers that I cover often in this blog, from January 2005 to present. In addition to viewing the data by retailer, you can also compare two retailers over the same time period. With time, I will get additional retailers into the database and extend the range of information available.
I love looking at these numbers and I created this application for me to better spot trends in retailers’ sales.
For example, does American Eagle’s healthy sales this year make it appear that they could be in for a very solid back to school season? It seems that they have had a more positive trend this year, compared to some other similar retailers in the marketplace.
Could this slight uptick that AE is showing be the foundation for a great BTS season?
These are the kinds of things that I like to look at. While I may not always know the reasons for why things are trending one way or another, I still like to look at these numbers. I hope the application I have developed is useful to others, as well.
Again, the URL for the Retail Monthly Comp Sales Charts is http://www.noturnonred.org/charts/. Let me know what you think.
Note: Motley Fool has a very good roundup of what exactly these numbers are and what they mean to retailers and analysts. They explain all of this much better than I can.
I’ve found myself with some free time lately to work on at least one of the ideas that has been bouncing around my head. I have created a web application that uses Google Maps to plot new retail construction of some of the larger retailers. It’s now online at Big Box Watch. Launching with over 100 developments that have been proposed or are now under construction.
Please take a look at it and let me know what you think. Pass the link on if you do enjoy it. I think people may enjoy knowing what is being constructed in their neighborhoods.
Also, I have moved all of my portfolio/resume stuff to robotic tom. I am available for hire!
No Turn On Red is a blog talking about the retail industry, social media, branding, and how to connect with your customer. Started in 2006, it is written by Tom Sullivan who is a UI Specialist at Media-Hive.
| DJIA | 11288.54 | +73.03 |
| S&p Retail Index | 349.36 | +1.12 |
| Wal Mart Stores | 56.60 | +0.10 |
| Autozone Inc | 120.18 | +1.73 |
| Walgreen Co | 31.45 | +0.06 |
| Cvs Caremark Cp | 38.49 | -0.21 |
| Family Dollar Sto | 22.52 | +0.57 |
| Windstream Corp | 12.05 | -0.14 |
| Tiffany And Co | 40.32 | +0.12 |
| Macy's Inc | 18.50 | -0.33 |
| Penney J C Co Hol | 36.69 | +0.71 |
| Lowes Companies | 20.22 | -0.01 |