Urban Still Rolling In Dough

Sometime in the last few years, American Apparel took the title of “hip clothing store everyone rags on” away from Urban Outfitters. How’d they do it? Unclear. Now that Rick Santorum’s gone, people don’t care the place is owned by a right-winger anymore; by contrast, American Apparel’s owner is creepy as hell¹. Nobody even really makes a peep when Urban brings out its annual “offensive” product in order to get attention.

Well, maybe this will swing the tide back in Urban’s favor: Despite the recession/depression/complete destruction of the American economy, Urban turned nearly a $60 million profit in the third quarter.

The company cited higher profit margins and a tight control of sales-and-administrative expenses. Going into the key holiday-shopping season, the company said it has maintained “rigorous management of inventory and expenses.” In the recent quarter, tighter control of inventory meant fewer items marked down for discount sale.

But the company apparently also attracted shoppers. For the quarter ended Oct. 31, Urban Outfitters had sales of $478 million, up 26 percent from the previous year’s sales of $379.3 million. On a comparable basis, measuring the same stores as a year ago, sales rose by 10 percent overall at its three store brands.

So that explains the resent surge in one-liner t-shirts I’ve been seeing.

¹ My favorite part of that blog post is the line, “That’s a charitable assessment of the November issue; a less generous one is to call it the biggest blunder in the magazine’s 18-month history.” Ohh, no! How will Portfolio ever recover…

Comcast: More Expensive Than Ever

Another year, another chance to get closer to spending $200 for cable! Comcast is upping its prices early this year, raising them by 3.5 percent on November 1.

Comcast spokesman Jeff Alexander says the company faces higher costs in a challenging environment. Among those higher costs, he says, is programming, notably high-def:

“We’ve added about 15, 20 new channels for customers: CNN high definition, Disney Channel high-def, TLC HD, Animal Planet HD, the Big Ten Network, Fox Business, and others.”

Verizon Fios says it’s not raising its rates; of course, you can’t get that in the City of Philadelphia, so… You know, at this point I might as well just hand over my whole salary to ‘em. Because I have to watch me some Animal Planet HD. Oh, there’s this show with little baby wolves, and they howl, it is so cute.

Comcast would like it, I guess, if you did not pay attention to this article in yesterday’s Inquirer headlined, “Certain that Comcast will thrive despite turmoil.”

Comcast Hiking Prices By 3 1/2 Percent Next Month [KYW 1060]

Exclusive: The Economy Blows Right Now

Yes, if you were wondering, the Daily News did need a staggering five staff writers to tell us the story of expensive food, gas and rent.

I do like “Let us pay,” though. Pretty good.

Let us pay: Struggling with soaring costs of food, fuel, rent [Daily News]

Tax Rebates To Make Life Worthwhile

Hey, remember back in 2001, when we all got $300 tax rebates? Well everybody forgot about it since it was right before Sept. 11, and so President Bush is going to give us free money again!

The economy hasn’t been all that great recently with falling stock prices, out-of-control credit and other forms of legal gambling. In remarks today, Bush said he wants a “temporary broad-based tax relief package” that will allow all of us to buy PS3s or MacBook Airs or whatever.

Hopefully the tax rebates will come in the form of new $300 bills with President Nixon on them, like in that Futurama episode. Hey, the president is doing something I like for the first time since… uh… since the last tax rebate, I guess.

Bush calls for broad-based tax relief to spur economy [CNN]