Hints and tips:
...Berkshire’s housing businesses, including modular home unit Clayton Homes and home decor retailer Nebraska Furniture Mart, offered hints about how consumers were responding to higher prices and increased...
...They will get discounts on goods from Berkshire’s companies, from Nebraska Furniture Mart to Borsheims Fine Jewelry. They will see old friends....
...A quarter century ago, his biggest non-financial investments — the “sainted seven” — were brands that included See’s Candies and Nebraska Furniture Mart....
...Last year they announced they were moving to Chicago’s Merchandise Mart because it transpired that people like to be in lively, historic urban districts....
...The “Sage of Omaha” also purchased businesses he liked, often found close to home and run by people he knew, such as National Indemnity, an insurer, in 1969, and Nebraska Furniture Mart in 1983....
...Furniture Mart downtown, another Berkshire company....
...” … A new owner seems to be in the offing for New York’s Armory Show, which belongs to MMPI (Merchandise Mart Properties Inc)....
...Li & Fung sources everything from T-shirts and anoraks to furniture and beauty products for western retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores and Toys R’ Us....
...Overall, I found my whole visit to Nebraska very trying. So much so that I’m still not over the question-and-answer session. Why? Partly because there were no questions....
...Mr Buffett himself has pointed to retail giant Wal-Mart as a family business that successfully opted for professional managers after the death of Sam Walton, its founder, in 1992....
...(H/T Bryce Elder) Related links: Wal-Mart Looks to Bolster Suppliers – Wall Street Journal...
...But others, such as Marcel Breuer and Mart Stam’s tubular chairs, do not....
...In an opening film montage to welcome the record 35,000 shareholders who made the pilgrimage to Omaha’s Qwest Center, Mr Buffett was recast as a salesman in his Nebraska Furniture Mart....
...The rest of the building is full of drab office furniture and, on most of the MGM floors, old movie posters in cheap frames. But floor 14, home to the MGM executive suite, is different....
...The good news perhaps for those not part of this fan club is that the American economy cannot be in total collapse if Wal-Mart is still expanding....
...In one clip Mr Buffett had been relegated to selling “Nervous Nellie” mattresses, which come with pockets for stashing cash, at his Nebraska Furniture Mart store in Omaha....
...Wal-Mart has repeatedly said it wants to enter the Russian market, but through working with a local partner rather than directly....
...“Wesco is a historical accident,” Mr Munger says of the holding company whose assets include an insurer, a steel manufacturer and a furniture-rental business....
...She continues to appear at his side at official events 1978 Susan introduces him to Astrid Menks, who eventually moves in with him 1983 Purchases Nebraska Furniture Mart for $60m....
...Wal-Mart, for instance, closed its layaway programme in 2006....
...As was recently pointed out in the New York Review of Books, the Walton family, of Wal-Mart fame, is wealthier than the bottom third of the US population put together – about 100m people....
...Asda, the country’s second-biggest supermarket group, said it would create 7,000 jobs this year – in line with expectations – with nine new food stores, five new “Living” stores selling furniture and homewares...
...When he bought Nebraska Furniture Mart from 89-year-old Rose Blumkin, her business had never had an audit. Mr Buffett did not request one, nor did he check the inventory or leases....
...It had been losing sales to Best Buy and to low-cost discounters, including Wal-Mart, for the previous two years....
...Comparable sales at Wal-Mart’s stores and supercenters rose 2 per cent during the month, while sales at its Sam’s Club warehouse stores rose 4.6 per cent....
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