Pity the poor retail store.
You know you've done it. You see something you like in the store and instead of buying it, you immediately pull out your smartphone to see if you can find a better price somewhere else. Then you order it online.
The process is called "showrooming" and it's a growing trend that hurts traditional brick-and-mortar stores.
Harris Interactive last week released a survey of more than 2,000 U.S. adults and found that 40 percent had showroomed.
At least Jacksonville-based fashion retailer Stein Mart Inc. seems to be immune from the problem, according to one analyst who follows the company.
Avondale Partners analyst Mark Montagna tried showrooming at Stein Mart and found that most items in the store weren't available online and for those items that could be found elsewhere, Stein Mart still offered a better price most of the time. In fact, the prices were far better.
"Based on a price survey of 150 items at Stein Mart, we conclude it is nearly immune to showrooming," Montagna said in a report last month.
Montagna used the Google Shopper app in a Stein Mart store to check on 150 items, and he could find a match for only 28 of them.
For the 28 items he could find online, Stein Mart had the best price for 21 of them and those items beat the best online price by an average of 24 percent.
"Stein Mart's customer loyalty should only strengthen from the fact that its prices almost always beat online competition," Montagna said.
Interim CEO Jay Stein mentioned Montagna's report during the company's quarterly conference call with analysts last month.
"Obviously, we were pleased with these results, which support our belief that our prices are extremely competitive even on online channels," Stein said.
Even though Stein Mart is planning a new e-commerce initiative later this year to sell more merchandise online, Montagna's research suggests its retail locations will continue to prosper.
"This showrooming immunity provides a moat around each store to further ensure consistent sales and margin growth," he said.
Stein Mart last week reported its second straight month of strong sales growth. Comparable-store sales jumped 8.2 percent for the four weeks ended June 1. That followed an 8 percent gain the previous month.
Comparable-store sales are sales at stores open for more than one year and are considered a key indicator of a retailer's performance.
Déjà vu with this public company
Another new public company is emerging in Jacksonville and this one brings a sense of déjà vu.
A Jacksonville-based company called Sunset Brands Inc. last week announced the acquisition of Ivest LLC, a financial services company with an emphasis on investment banking.
This follows an announcement in April by Sunset of the acquisition of Investment Capital Fund Group, an automobile financial services company.
According to its news releases, Sunset, which operates its business under the name Sunset Capital Assets, is focused on acquisition and investment in financial services companies in the Southeast. The company is publicly traded in the OTC market under the ticker symbol "SSBN."
It is not filing reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission but has been filing reports on the OTC market's website. Its reports show the company had no revenue in 2012.
In a news release last week, Sunset CEO Alan Speck said the company is progressing on its plan to offer a complete range of financial services.
"Ivest is part of our foundation on which we will continue building our Sunset Capital Assets brand and it, along with the recent acquisition of ICFG, will contribute immediately to our balance sheet strength," he said.
The OTC filings list Sunset's other top officers as Chairman J. Bert Watson and President Jeffrey Betros. Here's where the déjà vu comes in.
Watson and Betros also were top executives of another Jacksonville-based public company with a similar name, Sunset Financial Resources Inc.
Sunset Financial Resources was formed in 2004 to buy pools of mortgage loans and started its business with an initial public offering.
The company immediately was profitable but ran into problems in 2005 with losses on commercial loans.
Watson resigned as CEO of Sunset Financial Resources later in 2005 and the following year, the company merged into Philadelphia-based Alesco Financial Trust and closed its Jacksonville office.
Ironically, while all this was happening, Sunset Brands was operating as a publicly traded food and beverage company that had no relation at all to Sunset Financial Resources. The company was headquartered in Los Angeles.
Sunset Brands was filing regularly scheduled SEC reports but it deregistered as an SEC-reporting company in 2008. It's not clear what happened to the food and beverage business.
OTC filings show that Watson took over the company in October 2010, when it apparently had no operating businesses, and the company's headquarters office was moved to Jacksonville.
Jacksonville Bancorp faces delisting again
Jacksonville Bancorp Inc. is in trouble with Nasdaq again because of its low stock price.
The parent company of The Jacksonville Bank said in an SEC filing that it received notice that it could face a delisting because its stock price had fallen below Nasdaq's minimum requirement of $1.
Jacksonville Bancorp was in this position before, receiving a similar notice from Nasdaq in November 2012.
However, after a recapitalization in December, the company's stock price jumped well above $1, reaching as high as $3.60 in January. Nasdaq notified the company on Jan. 23 that it was back in compliance.
Unfortunately, the company's stock dropped back below $1 in April and has stayed there, trading close to the 50-cent level recently, so Nasdaq sent another letter, giving the company 180 days to resolve the problem.
Jacksonville Bancorp said in the SEC filing that it will "consider various options" to resolve the issue.
One possibility is a reverse stock split. The company's shareholders authorized a reverse split at a ratio of up to 1-to-20, meaning that stockholders would get one share for every 20 they currently own. That's one way to increase the trading price for a stock.
Jacksonville Bancorp also said that when the 180 days are up, it could get a grace period of another 180 days to fix the problem if it is in compliance with all other Nasdaq requirements.
Whatever happens, Jacksonville Bancorp will be keeping its Nasdaq listing for quite a while.
MAA merging with Colonial Properties Trust
Mid-America Apartment Communities and Colonial Properties Trust last week announced a merger to create a "Sunbelt-focused" publicly traded multifamily real estate investment trust.
The combined company will own 85,000 apartment units in 285 properties, with Jacksonville one of its largest markets.
Mid-America, or MAA, currently owns 12 apartment complexes in the Jacksonville market with 3,830 units. It also will own the 294-unit apartment project under construction at 220 Riverside Ave.
Jacksonville is MAA's second-largest market, behind Dallas, based on net operating income. Birmingham, Ala.-based Colonial Properties Trust currently doesn't have any properties in Jacksonville, but Jacksonville still will be the seventh largest market for the combined company after the merger, accounting for 4.6 percent of its net operating income.
The merged company will retain the MAA name and be headquartered at MAA's home office in Memphis.
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