Colgate-Palmolive Co. made headlines recently after some tubes of counterfeit “Colgate” toothpaste was found in some U.S. states, but the incident was ”absolutely negligible” for the company, its chief executive said on Wednesday.

“The impact on the business is vanishingly small,” Chief Executive Ian Cook said on a conference call. The goods had to be pulled from a number of dollar stores, but Colgate hasn’t felt much financial pressure from the issue.

Colgate, whose quarterly sales rose to $3.41 billion in the latest quarter, said it can only trace about $100,000 of lost business due to the incident. It spent less than $500,000 to get the product removed from stores.
 
Colgate kept consumers updated on the issue on its Web site and is still working with U.S. authorities to try to get at the root source of the product and stop it, Cook said.

Meanwhile, the company’s Hill’s pet food business is doing well despite an industry-wide pet food recall in March.  That recall included a couple of Hill’s cat food products made by Menu Foods.

Just because they shop at a store known for its convenient locations rather than low prices doesn’t mean cash-strapped consumers aren’t looking for a bargain.
 
Rite Aid said on Thursday that its customers sought out more general merchandise that was on sale in the latest quarter compared with a year earlier. The company did not change its promotions, customers just bought more items that were on sale.
 
That tidbit from Chairman, President and Chief Executive Mary Sammons during Rite Aid’s fiscal first-quarter conference call sparked interest. The first analyst to ask a question on the company’s conference call asked for more detail on the issue.

“They are just buying more economically and I think it’s undoubtedly related to their economic condition and the cost of fuel, etcetera,” Sammons said.
 
She also said that Rite Aid saw customers buying more products at promotional prices throughout last year.
 
Rite Aid’s sales of general merchandise at stores open at least a year rose just 1.6 percent in the fiscal first quarter after rising 2.1 percent a year earlier and just 1.2 percent in the company’s fiscal fourth quarter.
 
Larger rival Walgreen’s same-store sales of general merchandise rose 5.6 percent in its quarter ended May 31, and such sales rose 6.6 percent in the latest full quarter over at CVS, which ended on March 31.

Barnes & Noble and Borders Group, the top U.S. bookstore chains, reported quarterly results on Thursday.  Borders also announced a slew of changes, such as the possibility of exiting the bulk of its international business and closing down nearly half of its Waldenbooks stores.

Borders CEO George Jones, on the job since July, spoke with Reuters about his company’s plans.

Before we got down to some details on the major changes, here’s what Jones — a self-proclaimed “big, big Harry Potter fan” — had to say about the July launch of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”

“Presales … have been huge. They’ve surpassed our expectations and I think the publisher’s expectations, everything.”

“This should be the biggest one ever,” said Jones, who has not seen the book yet.

Jones and Robert Gruen, Borders’ executive VP of merchandising and marketing, both used to work at Warner Bros., the studio behind the Harry Potter movies.

“Believe me, whatever relationships we have, they aren’t that good.”

Jones joked about the movie “The Devil Wears Prada,” where Meryl Streep’s character Miranda Priestly asks her assistant Andy, played by Anne Hathaway, to track down an advance copy of the new Harry Potter book.

“Let me tell you, that’s a fictional story.”

Jones declined to discuss details of the partnerships Borders is working on for areas such as music downloads and online relationships. 
 
Why go back into the online business now (Borders linked up with Amazon.com in 2001 after launching its own site in 1998)?

“It’s just much more cost effective now to run it ourselves than it was 6 years ago,” Jones said. Also, now Borders will hold onto its shoppers rather than turning them over to Amazon, and shoppers at its online site can get Borders Rewards points, which they couldn’t do before.

How will items be priced online versus in the stores and versus the competition? 
     
“We realize that ultimately we are never going to win the battle on price, we’re not going to have a competitive advantage based on price,” Jones said. The company has not yet defined how items would be priced on the web site versus in its stores, he added. 
 
Borders will also try to fix its rewards program. Last year, consumers got certificates to redeem starting Nov. 15, which pressured sales during the important holiday season. 
Starting in May, the company will start to issue rewards more frequently, but Jones would not say how often they will be sent.

Jones declined to comment on whether Barnes & Noble changing some terms of its rewards program had any impact on Borders.

The Borders program has nearly 17 million members and counting.

Wal-Mart’s sales are closely watched by Wall Street and considered a bellwether for the retail industry and the health of the overall economy. Now, the International Securities Exchange and Revere Data are trying to bring Wal-Mart’s suppliers to the forefront of investors’ minds.

Several consumer products companies - such as private-label drink maker Cott Corp. and toy maker Hasbro - derive a good chunk of their sales from Wal-Mart. Now, a new index tracks the performance of 30 companies that get 16 percent or more of their sales from the retail giant. The company with the biggest exposure in the list is Handleman Co., a distributor of CDs and movies to stores, which gets 74 percent of its revenue from Wal-Mart.

Reuters subscribers can check out the index by opening a quote screen and entering .WMX. That symbol can also be entered on the investing page of Reuters.com in the section labled Stocks & Mutal Funds. 

These are the ten companies with the greatest revenue exposure to Wal-Mart in the ISE-Revere Wal-Mart Supplier Index:

Want a break from cooking that Thanksgiving turkey? Wal-Mart hopes you’ll go online to start that holiday shopping. Wait, don’t shop - just browse. The retail giant, which already slashed prices on some hot holiday items, will show you some special Thanksgiving treats, but you have to wait till “Black Friday” to buy them.
 
Here’s the deal. Eight deals will be posted on Wal-Mart’s web site on Thanksgiving. But they won’t be sold there. You’ll have to go to a bricks and mortar store between 5 a.m. and 11 a.m. on Black Friday to actually make your purchase.
 
So, let us know: What kind of deal would get you out of bed at the crack of dawn next Friday?
 

Are visions of gingerbread lattes dancing in your head? The Starbucks holiday drinks are back. You may see some new food at your local shop this holiday season, but the sweet drinks are the same.
 
“Rather than take away something that’s very popular with the customers, we’ve decided to continue to offer what they’ve been asking for,” said Starbucks Coffee’s U.S. president, Jim Alling. “That’s not to say we don’t look at new things during the holidays.”

Gingerbread lattes, eggnog lattes and Christmas Blend coffee will only be around till the end of the year. But did you know you can order peppermint mocha all year long? Alling says you can. One caveat: except during the holidays it won’t have those tasty red sprinkles.

The holiday drinks arrived one month after Starbucks raised prices on most of its drinks by 5 cents, but consumers do not seem swayed by the increase, the chain’s first in two years.

“At this time, there’s nothing that we’ve seen that is at all surprising to us or concerning,” Alling said. “Things have gone as anticipated.”

  Remember when Christmas shopping would start the day after Thanksgiving?

Those days are long gone. Wal-Mart already brought us closer to Black Friday by cutting prices on more than 100 games and toys.

“The holiday season is coming earlier this year than I’ve ever seen it. I would be willing to bet that it will come earlier next year,” said Darrell Rigby, head of the retail practice at Bain & Co.

“I was in Costco a month ago walking through holiday aisles,” Rigby said. ”The fact that Wal-Mart is out so quickly and so aggressively this year just says it was effective last year, so prepare for more of it.”

So what’s hot?  Besides T.M.X. Elmo, Rigby’s already hearing buzz about the Kid-Tough Digital Camera, FurReal Friends, Butterscotch the horse, and Nintendo’s long-awaited Wii.

“They will be priced aggressively — and, by the way, they will go quickly,” he said.  “People that wait for those kinds of items, trying to play a game of chicken as to ‘how long can I wait and get the lowest possible price,’ may very well be disappointed.”

Have you completed your holiday shopping? Or started?

You know you’re out there. More than 50 percent of American adults have regifted and would do it again, according to a new survey conducted by Tassimo Hot BeverageSystem (those single-serve coffee makers) and Harris Interactive.
    
We all know those relatives who pass along old fruitcake or other unwanted items, but the survey said that 77 percent of those polled regifted “because they felt the item was perfect for the new recipient.” Sure they did. Nine percent admitted to laziness and four percent were said they regifted because they just didn’t like the recipient.

Etiquette expert Peggy Post weighed in on the issue, and said regifting should only be done “under specific criteria, such as if you’re certain the gift is something the recipient would enjoy.”

If you head to New York’s Bryant Park in November, you’ll have a chance to trade in a regift you didn’t like for a free Tassimo machine. Then, go ahead and give that freebie as a gift, and keep the chain going.