As I sit in front of my laptop in St. Paul, Minnesota in the house I grew up in, scouring the wires for news to write up, I started putting together a timeline of Twin Cities retail. Initially, I was trying to get a better grasp of the history of the dearly departed Dayton’s department store chain here.

I was inspired by Minneapolis Star Tribune columnist...

Last week our associate editor Elise Diamantini and I spent a while at the cologne counter at Bloomingdale’s SoHo, and we were dazzled by the skills and charisma of a saleswoman named Leslie. (Elise wrote about it here.) What we learned at Bloomingdale’s was that a good salesperson can focus you. Her stories gave the fragrances a depth that made them more...

If you read our coverage of the vendor roundtable MR Magazine organized earlier this week, you heard Allan Ellinger giving some pretty tough advice on retail and vendor survival.

He suggested making targeted cuts in inventory and people. He warned that too many businesses have been focusing on the top line, and that it’s time to worry about the bottom...

“Is it true all these apparel stores are closing their doors?” a reader asked us late last week via e-mail. She was asking about a long list of retailers that has been circulating the Internet with a panicked message about the recession and a warning not to buy gift cards from store that may be going out of business.

It’s not true, we’re relieved to...

The day after Conde Nast announces it’s shutting down the barely three-year-old Men’s Vogue and making it a spring and fall supplement sold with the women’s magazine that gave birth to it, the fashion photographer Patrick McMullan announced that his iPhone magazine was finally available for download.

A month earlier, Esquire seemed to try to bridge the...