Strategy

Houston, Texas - XtraLight is pleased to announce Ron Gilcrease has joined XtraLight as VP of national accounts.   “We are pleased Mr. Gilcrease has chosen to introduce XtraLight and LEDLinX based fixtures to important national accounts across the U.S.,” said Jerry Caroom, XtraLight’s CEO.  

Tulsa, Oklahoma - Simon announced plans to bring Tulsa Premium Outlets to northeast Oklahoma. The project will be built in two phases at the intersection of US Highway 75 and West 61st Street in Tulsa. The first phase of the build out will be approximately 318,000 sq. ft. and an additional 82,000 sq. ft. will make up the second phase for a total of 400,000 sq. ft.  

New York — Teen retailer Delia’s Inc. plans to liquidate operations as it prepares to file Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection "in the very near term." The struggling retailer has been hurt by sluggish mall traffic, evolving fashion trends and weak online sales. It said it has  unable to find a merger partner, or get an acquisition or financing proposal that would allow it to remain a viable concern.  

Columbus, Ohio – Big Lots Inc. came up smaller than Wall Street expected with its fiscal performance in the third quarter of fiscal 2014. Net loss shrank to a higher-than-expected $3.44 million from $9.52 million in the same quarter the prior fiscal year.
  Net sales marginally grew to $1.11 billion from $1.1 billion, and same-store sales increased 1.4%. The company expects low-single-digit increases in same-store sales for the fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2014.
 

Big Lots hypothetical core customer Jennifer isn’t feeling so cheerful this holiday season as the nation’s leading closeout retailer is eyeing a low single digit fourth quarter comp increase.

Newtown Square, Penn. – Omnichannel is increasing the reach retailers have to their customers, but also increasing customer expectations. According to a survey of marketing decision-makers in omnichannel consumer products organizations from SAP, 86% of respondents agree that omnichannel has meant that customer and consumer expectations of the organization have increased.  

Teen retailer Delia’s Inc. plans to liquidate operations and file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection "in the very near term."

The company has struggled with weak sales for years and has not reported an annual profit since 2007.

Several teen apparel retailers have been losing market share to fast-fashion brands such as H&M, Forever 21 and Zara.

Buenos Aires, Argentina — Specialty entertainment applicance retailer Musimundo, which operates more than 200 stores in Argentina, deployed its e-commerce platform on the  IBM Cloud to meet increased customer demand on Cyber Monday.

As it prepared for Cyber Monday 2014, Musimundo's greatest challenge was to address the number of entries of people to its website per second, and it needed to manage load balance and security levels in accordance with regulatory requirements.