Spirit Halloween is filling up dead Christmas Tree Shops locations

Hi there! It’s me, editor-in-chief Cale Weissman , back with another newsletter of Modern Retail’s biggest stories of the week.?

In this edition, we get some more details about Spirit Halloween ’s newly announced Christmas store. Then, we have a scoop about 微软 making big changes to its retail media program. Lastly, we have a look into how this year’s October Prime Day performed with sellers.

You can find all of these stories below.

Spirit Halloween’s Christmas stores are taking over spaces once occupied by Christmas Tree Shops

Earlier this week, news broke that Spirit Halloween was going beyond its spooky roots. The retailer was opening a few new locations focused on Christmas decor. It turns out that Spirit is tapping some available real estate from a recently-gone retailer: Christmas Tree Shops.

Indeed, multiple Spirit Christmas locations will be in former Christmas Tree Shops stores. It follows a playbook Spirit has mastered, which finds available real estate at the best price, often from recently defunct players. But, in this case, the stores were already used for a similar use.

For now, only a handful of Spirit Christmas stores are set to open. But if successful, it could mean that Spirit is taking on a concept that a previous retailer failed to modernize.

You can read more about it here .

Microsoft looks set to shutter its retail media business

In 2019, Microsoft acquired the retail media technology startup PromoteIQ. From there, it brought on the company’s clients and tried to build out its own in-house retail media technology. Now, Microsoft seems to be making a strategic about-face.

Sources told Modern Retail that the technology leader is shutting down PromoteIQ and telling its clients to begin using external services like Criteo to handle offsite ad placements. It’s part of a bigger move by Microsoft to focus on higher-margin advertising.?

It’s an interesting development, given retail media’s newfound popularity. But a company like Microsoft clearly doesn’t want to build all of the technology if it isn’t bringing in enough of a profit.

You can learn more here .

Marketplace Briefing: Amazon’s Prime Day event in October is picking up steam

亚马逊 held its October Prime Day this past week, and sellers say it was bigger than ever before. The promotional event is meant to drum up early holiday sales, but it’s historically paled in comparison to the summer Prime Day.

However, early results show that the two sales events are becoming more similar. More brands told Modern Retail they were participating in this second Prime Day and reported better-than-expected sales.?

We’ll probably get more data from Amazon about how the event performed overall, but the overall sentiment is that it was indeed a success.

You can read our rundown here .

Those are all the stories we have today. Thanks for reading!

?— Cale