CARTERET, N.J. — Turning old industrial land into a sprightly new retail area is rarely easy, even in the best of times, but the task can seem especially daunting when the land in question sits next to a highway that is not a natural retail draw to begin with.
According to a report released on Wednesday by Internet tracking company ComScore, the Monday after Thanksgiving, which is traditionally referred to as Cyber Monday because of its online retail draw, topped last year's sales by 15.0%.
"Bait and switch" is an unethical practice through which a retail operation draws you in with a low-priced item and then encourages you to purchase a higher-priced item or one with a higher profit margin by, for example, admitting that the "bait" is unavailable or sold out.
Many retail specialists draw a distinction between shopping centers that cater to lower-income shoppers, who are more likely to lose their homes through foreclosure, and centers that serve more affluent customers.
A City Hall plan to rebuild the Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx as a retail complex drew more than 200 protesters to the huge, fortress-like building yesterday, where they called for new school rooms instead of chain stores on the site.
The home-improvement retail chain drew a Morgan Stanley analyst earlier this week.
In the late 1990s, the media and retail industries drew the attention of entrepreneurs and VCs first, leading to Amazon, eBay, Google, Yahoo, AOL, etc.
The experiment at organized retail initially drew huge traffic, or "footfalls"–120,000 on weekends as many visitors loved the air-conditioned corridors, imported escalators (then a first for shoppers in India) and McDonald's.
Even with 300 stores already selling $1 billion worth of gadgets a month in a sluggish retail market, Japan's largest electronics retailer still draws crowds.
On a September Saturday, after an impromptu tour of the barn with Pepper, the farm's pet sheep, Mr. Wright was manning the cash register at the farm's retail store, which draws about 4,000 visitors a year and generates at least $30,000 in sales.
