Consumer Affairs & Relations

Photo: Jeff Burt

Genesco is lowering its earnings forecast for the fiscal year despite a 3% increase in same-store sales over the holiday period.

The company said same-store sales increased 3% for the quarter-to-date period ended Jan.2. Sales for the company's e-commerce and catalog direct sales businesses increased 20% on a comparable basis for that period.

Dollar Tree says Family Dollar CEO Howard R. Levine is stepping down as an officer of the company following the integration of Family Dollar.

The company had previously announced that Levine would remain with the company for a period of time to assist with the integration, reporting to, and supporting, Dollar Tree’s CEO, Bob Sasser. Gary Philbin, who was named Family Dollar’s president and COO in July, will continue leading Family Dollar and will continue reporting to Sasser.

The saga — and drama — of American Apparel Inc. continues.

The leading retail associations — including the Retail Industry Leaders Association, the Food Marketing Institute, the National Association of Chain Drug Stores and the National Retail Federation — gave a mixed reaction to new waste management proposals by the Environmental Protection Agency.

While the associations called the proposed regulations a “step forward,” they also expressed concern about how the rules would impact the disposal of unsold consumer products and pharmaceuticals by stores.

Supervalu Inc. on Thursday moved closer to spinning off its Save-A-Lot division as a public company, filing a plan with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Under the plan, Supervalu shareholders will own at least 80.1% of the spun-off company. The stock would be publicly traded under an as-of-yet unidentified ticker. Supervalu did not set a deadline for taking Save-A-Lot public.

Children’s Place did the most shareholder friendly thing possible just days after it announced a slate of other shareholder friendly measures.

Philadelphia -- PREIT announced that Ron Rubin will step down as the company's executive chairman, a role he's held since 2012, effective June 7, 2016. Rubin will continue in his role as chairman of the board.

How will retailers fare in 2016? Very well, according to experienced market watchers.

“We expect core retail sales to grow 5.3% in 2016,” says Scott Hoyt, senior director of consumer economics for Moody’s Analytics, a research firm based in West Chester, Pennsylvania. (Core retail sales exclude volatile revenues from auto sales and gas stations.) That is notably faster than the 4.2% rate anticipated when 2015 sales are finally tallied. The 2015 experience was, again, slightly better than the 3.9% growth of 2014.

Rebecca Flick has joined Hancock Fabrics, a struggling operator of 260 stores, as CFO after spending 14 years early in her finance career with the Home Depot.

Flick was named CFO effective Jan. 4, to fill a position that had been held on an interim basis since August 2015 by O. Pierce Crockett, Hankcock’s divisional VP and controller. Crockett stepped in to lead the finance group after James Brown resigned as CFO after holding the post for less than two years.