Walmart said Friday all U.S. stores will close for Thanksgiving, Nov. 25, as a “thank you” to employees for their “continued hard work during the pandemic.” Stores will operate regular posted hours Nov. 24, with Black Friday store hours to be announced at a later date, it said. The retailer closed on Thanksgiving last year, too, saying during COVID-19 “this isn’t a year for crowds.” E-commerce has largely replaced Thanksgiving Day in-store shopping in recent years.
CEDIA Expo owner Emerald Holding is expecting 10,000 home technology design and construction attendees and over 300 exhibitors, it emailed Friday, five days before registration begins for the custom electronics industry's Sept. 1-3 annual trade event. The last in-person CEDIA Expo was in Colorado in September 2019, drawing about 15,000 attendees, 10,000 buyers and over 300 exhibitors, an Emerald spokesperson emailed. Last year’s event was canceled due to COVID-19 when the Colorado Convention Center was reserved by Gov. Jared Polis (D) as a temporary medical facility through the remainder of 2020. This year’s Expo is in Indianapolis. “We’re all eager to connect again on a human level and get back to face-to-face events as we celebrate everything we value as a community together again,” said Emerald Group Vice President-CEDIA Expo Jason McGraw. Contracts are still in conversations and exhibitors are “still signing on,” the spokesperson said. The website shows major exhibitors including Control4, LG, Lutron, Samsung, Savant, SnapAV, Sonance, Sonos, Sony and Crestron, which planned to return to CEDIA Expo last year for the first time in five years (see 2005060060) before it was canceled. Brands exhibiting for the first time at CEDIA Expo this year are Hisense, Environmental Lights, Datum Project Processing and Launchpad, formerly Innovation Alley. One attendee's PR representative told us Friday his client's attendance at CEDIA Expo 2021 “is as definite as anything could be these days,” but “if things take a turn, they will take that into consideration.”
The U.S. Court of International Trade, site of the massive Section 301 litigation, plans to return about half its staff to its Foley Square location in lower Manhattan by mid-July, Chief Judge Mark Barnett told our affiliated publication Trade Law Daily. The court hasn't had a scheduled staff presence in its building since March 2020, said the judge. The goal is a "sustained reopening" with half the employees continuing to telework for a few months after the summer, he said. Barnett, who took over as chief judge April 5 (see 2104060041), said the early days of his tenure were dominated by how to transition out of a "maximum telework" environment. "If you spoke to any chief judge across the country, that’s what’s occupying a fair degree of our administrative time," he said. "There’s just a lot of different angles to it. There’s staff, you need to think about them. You need to think about what it means in terms of proceedings and how they’re conducted. You need to think about participants in those proceedings and what their status may be, their ability to be in person or not for various reasons."
Staples is upping the prizes in its third annual Thank a Teacher contest promotion for educators returning to the physical classroom for the fall after teaching remotely for more than a year, said the retailer Thursday. Parents, students and colleagues can nominate their teachers to be one of 20 to win $5,000 worth of school supplies for their classrooms, it said. New this year for each of the winning contestants is $2,000 in “self-care” products to help them “recharge” before returning to class, it said. Staples cited a Rand survey saying COVID-19 “exacerbated what were already high stress levels pre-pandemic, by forcing teachers to work more hours and navigate an unfamiliar remote environment.”
Registration for CEDIA Expo opens June 9, show owner Emerald Holding emailed Wednesday. It encouraged prospective attendees to register and book housing before July 10 when rates increase. The event, to be at the Indianapolis Convention Center, includes more than 100 CEDIA education courses and 50 on-demand classes recorded from the in-person conference. Classes will be Aug. 31-Sept. 1; the Expo runs Sept. 1-3. Emerald’s COVID-19 health safety plan has “extra precautions, beyond those mandated by government and local authorities, including temperature checks and face masks required of all persons entering the building, without exception,” it said. Emerald will continue to follow recommendations and guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, and state and local officials. “We will adapt and change our plans as recommendations become available, to limit potential spread most effectively,” Emerald said. Updates will be posted here.
Many Zoom customers are “looking to create hybrid solutions as they seek to cautiously reopen some offices,” said CEO Eric Yuan on an earnings call Tuesday for fiscal Q1 ended April 30. “The hybrid model is here to stay,” he said. “Many companies are redesigning the workplace to enhance the hybrid work experience.” Q1 revenue of $956.2 million was up 191% from a year earlier, and exceeded “the high end of our guidance” by nearly 6%, said Chief Financial Officer Kelly Steckelberg. The “healthy mix” between new and existing customers helped drive the year-over-year revenue increase, she said. New accounts generated about 57% of the “incremental revenue” in the quarter, she said. Zoom customers with more than 10 employees generated 63% of revenue, and the 37% generated by accounts with 10 or fewer employees was up from 30% in Q1 last year and “stable quarter over quarter,” she said.
Imax reported the biggest U.S. opening weekend of the pandemic era, logging $5.3 million from A Quiet Place Part II on 361 screens. Social distancing measures remain in key markets such as New York and Los Angeles, which limit capacity to 40%, it said Tuesday. The theater chain had $9.5 million in receipts globally for the weekend.
T-Mobile will target small businesses with new smartphone plans, Mike Katz, executive vice president-T-Mobile for business, blogged Tuesday. “With vaccination rates rising and the number of Covid cases dropping, we’re seeing signs of life that we haven’t for more than a year.”
Nearly a quarter of employees who were working from home due to COVID-19 have returned to the office either voluntarily or on a company directive, Resonate reported Friday, citing an April 14-May 5 survey. Of those offered a hybrid work model, about 8% plan to work in the office most or all days, the same percentage as those planning to work mostly from home, it said. The number of consumers who think browsing and buying in a physical store is important grew 8% month to month; 37% said curbside pickup is important, 14.3% cited same-day delivery. Some 8% more customers shopped in a physical store than the previous month, and 24.4% of electronics shoppers said they would shop at a brick-and-mortar store now vs. online, compared with 22.7% in the previous survey. The number of consumers saying they're “completely likely” to get the coronavirus vaccine after it’s available to them rose 4 percentage points in the April 14-May 5 survey from the previous month. About 16% said they were not at all likely; 57% said completely likely. Twenty-four percent said they would get the vaccine in October at the earliest; 35% said April-June and 9% said July-September. About a third were vaccinated January-March. Of those who received a government stimulus payment, 21% said they would save the money, 13% earmarked it for credit card bills and 12% assigned it to household spending such as food and clothing. Three percent said they would spend it on “something fun.” The percentage of consumers not going to crowded activities until the virus is under control fell 40% from March to May, it said, while the number eating in restaurants once a month or more grew 20%.
Seven in 10 U.S. and European companies will shift to hybrid work post-pandemic, with work-from-anywhere protocols in place for at least two days a week, predicted Forrester Wednesday. Companies that succeed here will benefit from employee experience, higher retention and recruitment advantages, it said: Some 55% of U.S. employees hope to work from home more often post-pandemic, while some executives view this with skepticism, but it's “imperative for higher-value talent.”