Strategy

Gordmans Stores plans to open a new store next month in its hometown of Omaha in April, the first of five new units the apparel and home décor retailer has planned for the year.

Destination XL Group is seeing strong same store sales growth from its stores branded as DXL as it continues to shift away from the smaller footprint Casual Male concept.

Destination XL Group, which bills itself as the largest omnichannel specialty retailer of big and tall men's apparel, said its total same store sales increased 3.1%, but its 137 DXL stores open for more than 13 months grew comps 8.9%.

Meeting Walmart’s product information requirements is not always easy for its suppliers, but the retailer is providing a new option that may make things a little simpler.

Walmart is integrating with product content technology provider Shotfarm. Walmart suppliers can now use the Shotfarm Switch Marketplace platform to directly connect with the retailer. This means suppliers can work with requirement such as the Walmart Spec program, which details the required, recommended, and optional data attributes suppliers must provide for their products.

Carl Nottberg, a veteran retail facilities executive, lost his battle with cancer on March 14, 2016.

Nottberg, senior VP of development at EMCOR Facilities Services, was suffering from multiple myeloma, a relatively uncommon form of cancer that attacks the plasma cells in the bone marrow.

Google is reportedly looking to beef up its professional apps offering by purchasing a well-known provider of hosted online retail services. According to Re/Code, Google is considering purchasing Shopify. The Canadian provider of cloud-based e-commerce tools is a public company valued at $2.25 billion. [Re/Code]

Specialty apparel retailer New York & Company plans to convert even more of its nearly 500 stores to an outlet format following a strong finish to the year.

This week I’d like to discuss the re-emergence of skyline signs, but first allow me to offer a quick thank you to the entire Chain Store Age and SPECS Show teams for executing a trade show I won’t soon forget.

Of course, I’m talking about last week’s show at the beautiful Hilton Anatole in Dallas, #SPECS2016.

The pace of expansion slowed at Shoe Carnival in 2015 but the company produced respectable growth against a challenging prior year comparison that has it poised to achieve a major milestone in 2016.

Leading off price apparel retailer Ross Stores is feeling the “Bern,” and named long time merchant Bernie Brautigan to the role of president of merchandising.

Brautigan previously served as Ross Stores’ group executive vice president of merchandising since 2014. He will continue to report to Ross CEO Barbara Rentler in his new role and be responsible for the ladies apparel businesses, children's, shoes, and accessories.

Target Corp. is expanding the management of its technology organization with two new executive hires.

Tom Kadlec will join Target as senior VP of infrastructure and operations. He will be tasked with leading efforts to modernize and enhance Target’s technology foundation. The company also announced the hiring of Joel Crabb as VP of architecture, with responsibility for enterprise architecture, agile practices and Application Program Interfaces (APIs).