Labor & Employment

There is an increasing difficulty in maintaining a skilled technical workforce. As the current workforce ages, technical experts are harder to find and concerns arise around workforce costs.

In 2016, retail chains will continue to face increasing competition and high consumer expectations. Changing regulations will also impact retail businesses. We see the regulatory issues below as the most critical for the retail industry this year and beyond.

With 2016 upon us, many employers find themselves nervously awaiting what election-year politics might bring to their doorsteps. Retailers and restaurant operators, more than ever, have been thrust front and center into the political landscape, with labor issues at the top of candidate’s agendas as well as the subject of numerous ballot issues at the state and local level. As a result, the business models and labor practices of entry-level employers are being evaluated by the public in much the same way the candidates are.

Good news for retailers: Banks are flush with money and eager to lend.

“Credit is more available than at any time since the great recession,” said Walter Simson, principal of Chatham, New Jersey, -based Ventor Consulting (ventorllc.com). “A more liberal lending environment has opened a window of opportunity for retailers to get more capital with less risk.”

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.

For the retailing industry, 2015 was another year of seismic shifts as merchants continued to keep pace with the evolving digital landscape. It was also a busy year of executive comings and goings. Here is my pick of industry executives — all new to their positions — to keep an eye on in 2016.

New Hyde Park, N.Y. -- Kimco Realty Corp. announced that Conor C. Flynn, president and CEO, has been appointed to the company’s board of directors effective January 1, 2016, simultaneous with his elevation to the CEO role. Flynn succeeds David B. Henry who retired as vice chairman of the board of directors and CEO on January 1, 2016.

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.

Following a contentious exchange with a large shareholder in 2015, Children’s Place is changing a key provision of its bylaws that allows investors to nominate directors and allowing a vote on several other measures shareholders identified as concerns.

Restructuring will be key to retail survival in 2016, according to veteran retail analyst Walter Loeb, who is worried about the future profitability of many leading traditional retailers as the year gets underway. “They are losing sales productivity in their stores while expenses rise and management bureaucracy grows,” Loeb wrote in an article on Forbes.com. [Forbes.com]