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Big Lots continues to trickle back to life after a bankruptcy last year that was widely expected to lead to its demise. The discount retailer will see another 54 store reopenings at the beginning of next month, according to Variety Wholesalers, the North Carolina-based retail company that has taken control of hundreds of Big Lots leases. These second wave store openings will span 12 states across the South and Midwest, a Variety spokesperson shared with Fast Company. The stores are expected to open on Thursday, May 1. What happened to the original Big Lots? After suffering declining sales and foot traffic for years, Big Lots filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in September 2024. The company fell under the control of liquidation firm Gordon Brothers and had been expected to close every location. But Variety Wholesalerswhich owns Roses, Super Dollar, Bargain Town, and other discount retail chainsagreed to take over at least 200 leases in a last-minute deal announced in December. As part of the deal, Variety agreed to operate the locations under the Big Lots brand. However, after selling off merchandise and holding going-out-of-business sales, the Variety-owned locations will still shutter for at least a few weeks while the company prepares them for reopening. The first wave of nine locations opened last week with stores in six states, as Fast Company first reported in March. Future openings are planned for June, for a total fleet count of 219 locations when all is said and done. At the time of the bankruptcy, Big Lots had more than 800 locations around the country, meaning its footprint under Variety will be significantly smaller, though hopefully no less beloved by fans of discount merchandise. North Carolina will see the biggest number of Big Lots openings in the second wave, with 12 locations set to open in the state. Additional second-wave stores will be located in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia, Indiana, Tennessee, South Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia. The full list appears below: Michigan 4157 E. Court Street, Burton, MI 48509 5112 Miller Rd, Flint, MI 48507 7651 23 Mile Rd, Shelby Township, MI 48316 Ohio 4331 Mahoning Ave NW, Warren, OH 44483 7100 South Ave, Boardman, OH 44512 1965 W State St, Alliance, OH 44601 498 Cadiz Rd, Wintersville, OH 43953 56104 National Rd, Bridgeport, OH 43912 6300 E Livingston Ave, Reynoldsburg, OH 43068 Pennsylvania 866 Scranton Carbondale Hwy, Archbald, PA 18403 1010 O’Neill Hwy, Dunmore, PA 18512 7405 Westbranch Hwy, Lewisburg, PA 17837 West Virginia 1228 Country Club Rd, Fairmont, WV 26554 104 Thompson Dr, Bridgeport, WV 26330 710 Beverly Pike, Elkins, WV 26241 118 Hills Plz, Charleston, WV 25312 110 Eagle School Rd, Martinsburg, WV 25404 7200 Mccorkle Ave SE, Charleston, WV 25304 Kentucky 200 Sycamore St Ste 151, Elizabethtown, KY 42701 472 Eastern Byp, Richmond, KY 40475 1714 Perryville Rd Ste 400, Danville, KY 40422 942 Happy Valley Rd, Glasgow, KY 42141 Virginia 1090 Millwood Pike, Winchester, VA 22602 2715 W Main St, Waynesboro, VA 22980 4300 Portsmouth Blvd, Chesapeake, VA 23321 2646 Greensboro Rd, Martinsville, VA 24112 Indiana 195 S US Hwy 231, Jasper, IN 47546 Tennessee 1262 NW Broad St, Murfreesboro, TN 37129 4825 N Broadway St, Knoxville, TN 37918 420 Park Blvd, Rogersville, TN 37857 840 25th St NW, Cleveland, TN 37311 North Carolina 1504 N Bridge St, Elkin, NC 28621 1826 W US Hwy 421 Ste K, Wilkesboro, NC 28697 526c US Highway 70 SW, Hickory, NC 28602 2587 W Franklin Blvd, Gastonia, NC 28052 1328 Carter St, Mount Airy, NC 27030 1063 Yadkinville Rd, Mocksville, NC 27028 100 Westwood Village Dr, Clemmons, NC 27012 12295 Capital Blvd, Wake Forest, NC 27587 1110 Julian R Allsbrook Hwy, Roanoke Rapids, NC 27870 955 N Wesleyan Blvd, Rocky Mount, NC 27804 4956 Long Beach Rd SE Ste 8, Southport, NC 28461 2407 N Herritage St Ste E, Kinston, NC 28501 Alabama 5363 Hwy 90 W Ste C, Mobile, AL 36619 603 US Hwy 72 W, Athens, AL 35611 1820 6th Ave SE, Decatur, AL 35601 South Carolina 2349 Cherry Rd Ste 79, Rock Hill, SC 29732 1000 N Pine St, Spartanburg, SC 29303 915 S St Ste A, Simpsonville, SC 29681 1023A S Pendleton St, Easley, SC 29642 Georgia 558 Battlefield Pkwy, Fort Oglethorpe, GA 30742 323 Habersham Village Cir, Cornelia, GA 30531 110 E Northside Dr, Valdosta, GA 31602 2708 Peach Orchard Rd, Augusta, GA 30906
Category:
E-Commerce
Tariff exemptions announced Friday on electronics like smartphones and laptops are only a temporary reprieve until the Trump administration develops a new tariff approach specific to the semiconductor industry, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Sunday.White House officials, including President Donald Trump himself, spent Sunday downplaying the significance of exemptions that lessen but won’t eliminate the effect of U.S. tariffs on imports of popular consumer devices and their key components.“They’re exempt from the reciprocal tariffs but they’re included in the semiconductor tariffs, which are coming in probably a month or two,” Lutnick told ABC’s This Week on Sunday.Trump added to the confusion hours later, declaring on social media that there was no “exception” at all because the goods are “just moving to a different” bucket and will still face a 20% tariff as part of his administration’s move to punish China for its role in fentanyl trafficking.The Trump administration late Friday had said it would exclude electronics from broader so-called reciprocal tariffs, a move that could help keep the prices down for phones and other consumer products that aren’t usually made in the U.S.China’s commerce ministry in a Sunday statement welcomed the change as a small step even as it called for the U.S. to completely cancel the rest of its tariffs.Sparing electronics was expected to benefit big tech companies like Apple and Samsung and chip makers like Nvidia, though the uncertainty of future tariffs may rein in an anticipated tech stock rally on Monday.U.S. Customs and Border Protection said items like smartphones, laptops, hard drives, flat-panel monitors and some chips would qualify for the exemption. Machines used to make semiconductors are excluded too. That means they won’t be subject to most of the tariffs levied on China or the 10% baseline tariffs elsewhere.It was the latest tariff change by the Trump administration, which has made several U-turns in its massive plan to put tariffs in place on goods from most countries. White House officials sought to dismiss any suggestion of a reprieve as the weekend progressed.“It’s not really an exception. That’s not even the right word for it,” U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday. “This type of supply chain moved from the tariff regime for the global tariff, the reciprocal tariff, and it moved to the national security tariff regime.”Greer added that “the president decided that we’re not going to have exemptions. We can’t have a Swiss cheese solution to this universal problem that we’re facing.”On Air Force One Saturday night, President Donald Trump told reporters he would get into more specifics on exemptions on Monday. In his post Sunday on TruthSocial, he promised the White House was “taking a look at Semiconductors and the WHOLE ELECTRONICS SUPPLY CHAIN.”Some had assumed the exemption filed Friday night reflected the president’s realization that his China tariffs are unlikely to shift more manufacturing of smartphones, computers and other gadgets to the U.S. any time soon, if ever.The administration has predicted that the trade war prod Apple to make iPhones in the U.S. for the first time, but that was an unlikely scenario after Apple spent decades building up a finely calibrated supply chain in China.It would take several years and cost billions of dollars to build new plants in the U.S., burdening Apple with economic forces that could triple the price of an iPhone and torpedo sales of its marquee product.The turmoil has battered the stocks of tech’s “Magnificent Seven” — Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, Tesla, Google parent Alphabet and Facebook parent Meta Platforms.At one point, the Magnificent Seven’s combined market value had plunged by $2.1 trillion, or 14%, from April 2 when Trump unveiled sweeping tariffs on a wide range of countries. When Trump paused the tariffs outside of China on Wednesday, the lost value in those companies was pared to $644 billion, or a 4% decline.An electronics exemption would fulfill the kind of friendly treatment that industry was envisioning when Apple CEO Tim Cook, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos assembled behind the president during his Jan. 20 inauguration.That united display of fealty reflected Big Tech’s hopes that Trump would be more accommodating than President Joe Biden’s administration.Apple won praise from Trump in late February when the Cupertino, California, company committed to invest $500 billion and add 20,000 jobs in the U.S. during the next four years. The pledge was an echo of a $350 billion investment commitment in the U.S. that Apple made during Trump’s first term when the iPhone was exempted from China tariffs.An electronics exemption would remove “a huge black cloud overhang for now over the tech sector and the pressure facing U.S. Big Tech,” said Wedbush analyst Dan Ives in a research note. Ives amended that note after Lutnick’s comments Sunday, saying the confusing news out of the White House “is dizzying for the industry and investors and creating massive uncertainty and chaos for companies trying to plan their supply chain, inventory, and demand.”Neither Apple nor Samsung responded to requests for comment over the weekend. Nvidia declined to comment. O’Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island. AP White House correspondent Darlene Superville in West Palm Beach, Florida, and AP Technology Writer Michael Liedtke in Berkeley, California contributed to this report. Mae Anderson and Matt O’Brien, Associated Press
Category:
E-Commerce
Its been another chaotic weekend when it comes to President Trumps tariff trade war. On Friday, it was announced that electronic devices like smartphones and computers would be exempt from the looming tariffs of up to 145%music to tech investors’ ears. But by Sunday, the president had said that any exemptions would be short-lived. Despite this tariff exemption whiplash, the Magnificent Seven tech stocks of Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla are all currently up in premarket trading this morningthe first trading session after the tariff exemptions were initially announced. Heres what you need to know. Tariff exemption whiplash Since President Trump announced sweeping tariffs on nearly every country in the world on April 2, the stock markets have been hammered. But perhaps even worse than the tariffs effect on the markets has been the messaging around the tariffs. At various times over the past two weeks, administration officials have stated that the tariffs are both open to negotiation and permanent. And now the messaging over tariff exemptions is equally as confusing. On Saturday, Bloomberg was the first to report that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which is charged with managing tariffs on imported goods, had posted a bulletin day earlier, on April 11, that the Trump administration had declared tariff exemptions on certain electronic devices. These exemptions meant that many popular consumer itemsand items that are also critical to the supply chains of Americas Big Tech companieswould not be hit with staggering 145% tariffs if being imported from China (and lower, but still high tariffs from other nations). The bulletin said there were now exemptions on smartphones, computers, tablets, and even smartwatches, among other electronic items. This news was particularly welcome to Apples investors, as the company sources many of its iPhones, MacBooks, and Apple Watches from China. But this relief surrounding the tariff exemptions was short-lived. Thats because, on Sunday, April 13, Trump officials and President Trump himself stated that the just-published exemptions werent actually permanent. Policy confusion continues As noted by CNN, Trumps commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, told ABC News on Sunday morning that (Electronics are) exempt from the reciprocal tariffs, but theyre included in the semiconductor tariffs, which are coming in probably a month or two. In other words, Lutnick seemed to confirm that smartphones and laptops are indeed exempt from the existing reciprocal tariffs. However, he further implied that, in a few months, the Trump administration will be rolling out another new type of tariff to cover items with semiconductors (computer chips) inside. That would mean smartphones and laptops will be hit with tariffs then. Lutnick also said that upcoming tariffs targeting products that are key to national security, which likely include semiconductor products, are not available for negotiation. President Trump also chimed in on Sunday on Truth Social, announcing that NOBODY is getting ‘off the hook’ for the unfair Trade Balances, and Non Monetary Tariff Barriers, that other Countries have used against us, especially not China which, by far, treats us the worst! Trump went on to claim that There was no Tariff exception announced on Friday. He said that the reportedly previously announced exempted products like smartphones and laptops were still subject to an existing 20% fentanyl tariff and they are just moving to a different Tariff bucket. The Fake News knows this, but refuses to report it, the president continued. We are taking a look at Semiconductors and the WHOLE ELECTRONICS SUPPLY CHAIN in the upcoming National Security Tariff Investigations. Big tech stocks react in Monday trading While Apple would undoubtedly be the biggest winner from any electronics exemptions in the tariffs on China, nearly every major tech company would benefit as well. Even if they do not sell physical hardware products, they rely on servers and other electronics to keep their software services running. So its no wonder that, what the Trump administration says is now just a temporary pause, is still being met with a positive reaction in the markets when it comes to the stock prices of the Magnificent Seven. Heres how Mag Seven stocks are reacting at the time of this writing in premarket trading: Alphabet Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG): up 1.4% Amazon.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN): up 1.6% Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL): up 4.9% Meta Platforms, Inc. (Nasdaq: META): up 1.7% Microsoft Corporation (Nasdaq: MSFT): up 0.8% NVIDIA Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA): up 1.8% Tesla, Inc. (Nasdaq: TSLA): up 1.3% Its worth keeping in mind, however, that while the Trump administration says any tariff exemptions are temporary, you have to take that with a grain of saltor at least be aware that things could change in the future. The administration’s stance on tariffsor at least the administration’s messaging around its stance on tariffshas been all over the place this month. Things could be very different a week from now, as Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts pointed out this weekend. Nobody can figure out what the rules will be five days from now, much less five years from now, she said (via CNN). This story is developing . . .
Category:
E-Commerce
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