Marketing

Columbus, Ohio - DSW Inc. is shifting titles and responsibilities to its executive ranks, with all changes effective Feb. 2. Carrie McDermott, currently executive VP, sales and operations, will be appointed executive VP and COO.  

In addition, Bill Jordan, currently executive VP and general counsel, will be appointed executive VP and chief administrative officer, adding IT to his portfolio of responsibilities.

New York -- In a new type of retail disruption, London’s must buzzed-about department store, Selfridges, plans to remove the men’s and women’s departments on the three floors of its Oxford Street flagship from mid- March to the end of April, replacing them with unisex or gender-neutral shops.  
 

Matthews, N.C. – Howard Levine, CEO of Family Dollar Stores Inc., reportedly plans to sell between one and two million shares of company stock in the next 10 days. According to the Charlotte Business Journal, Levine filed his intention to make the sale with SEC.

Gap Inc. has implemented yet another management shake-up, this time eliminating its creative director.

Rebecca Bay, whom the apparel retailer brought in from Hennes & Mauritz in September 2012 to help revive its namesake brand, has left the company.

The retailer also said that it has named Gap Inc. veteran Scott Key as general manager of customer experience, overseeing a newly created e-commerce and marketing organization, as the company aims to sharpen its focus on customers.

Many U.S. retailers have difficulty being successful in the Great White North of Canada. Now that Target is exiting, can Walmart fill the gap? A new article suggests that it can, if Walmart works at it hard enough.

Financial blog The Motley Fool reports that Walmart can succeed where Target failed. 

Dayton, Ohio – Personalization has become something of a “family value” for marketers. According to the Teradata 2015 Global Data-Driven Marketing Survey, 90 % of marketers say making marketing individualized is a priority.  

They want to move beyond segmentation to true one-to-one personalization in a real-time context. Faster, more accurate decisions are key benefits of using data for nearly two-thirds of respondents.

Other findings include:

Hangzhou, China – Although Alibaba Holding Group Inc. reported a healthy sales increase for the third quarter of fiscal 2015, it became a victim of its own expectations as it still missed on revenue projections and also reported declining profits. Net income totaled $964 million, a 28% drop from $1.36 billion in the same quarter a year earlier.

Overstock.com rode the wave of e-commerce during the holidays to an 18% increase in profits.

The online retailer said fourth-quarter revenues rose 18.3% to $470.4 million as the e-commerce heavyweight increased its average order size to $159.

The retailer also said its gross margin increased by 0.2% to 18.2% due to improved warehouse efficiency, lower inbound freight costs and reduced credit card fees.