Corporate Governance

Among the retail strategies employed by Sears Hometown and Outlet Stores to turn around its business, the store-within-a-store concept might rank as the most inventive.   Sears Hometown and Outlet Stores have been cropping up inside existing Ace locations around the country (and in some cases, built from the ground up as a combo store).   The latest example of this is taking place in Santa Paula, California, inside the Heritage Ace Hardware located at 568 Suite C West Main Street.  

Hudson’s Bay Co. is bullish on robotics.   

Town administrators in Newnan, Georgia, have proposed offering incentives to owners of local shopping centers to re-invigorate them.   Municipal staff this week invited a group of community leaders to brainstorm about what could be done with the number of dilapidated centers in Newnan. Obstacles preventing owners from re-investing, the group said, included lack of cash flow, fear of selling due to capital gains taxes, and a reluctance to invest until neighboring properties improved.   

Retailers are doing a good job online when it comes to sales, but they are failing when it comes protecting sensitive shopper data.   All of the nation’s largest retailers had multiple issues with domain security, which increases the risk of hackers impersonating a retailer's site and falsifying a checkout form to obtain a user's credit card information, according to a report by security rating firm SecurityScoreboard that exposes cybersecurity vulnerabilities across 48 of the biggest U.S holiday retailers. 

The nation’s largest maternity clothing retailer failed to meet sales and earnings expectations in the third quarter amid changes designed to focus on its core operations.     Destination Maternity reported a net loss of $1.5 million in its fiscal third quarter.   On a per-share basis, the company said it had a loss of 11 cents. Losses, adjusted for non-recurring costs, were 9 cents per share.   

A Florida-based supermarket company tops J.D. Power’s 2016 U.S. Pharmacy Study.   Publix Pharmacy, the in-store pharmacy at Publix Super Markets, came out on top in the J.D. Power report, a customer satisfaction benchmark study that provides pharmacy-specific performance comparisons among brick-and-mortar pharmacies.  

Restoration Hardware reported better-than-expected earnings and sales for the third quarter, but the upscale home furnishings retailer cut its full-year outlook amid slow sales of its holiday collection.    The company also said that its name will change in January to RH, which is the same as its stock ticker.   Restoration Hardware reported net income of $2.5 million. Earnings, adjusted for non-recurring costs, were 19 cents per share.  

A store transformed — that’s how Target refers to its Baton Rouge East (Louisiana) store which has re-opened its doors after sustaining massive damage from the floods that devastated the area in August.  

Costco Wholesale Corp. a better-than-expected quarterly profit, helped partially by lower fees to credit card partner Visa.   Costco, which completed its switch to Visa from American Express during the fourth quarter, said net income rose to $545 million, or $1.24 per share, in the first quarter, ended Nov. 20, from $480 million, or $1.09 per share, in the year-ago period. (The retailer’s profit in the latest quarter included a $51 million gain from a legal settlement.)  

Consumers’ demand for stylish workout wear no shows on slowing down.        Lululemon Athletica Inc.’s sales rose 13% to $544.4 million, surpassing Wall Street estimates.   Total comparable sales, which includes comparable store sales and direct to consumer, increased by 7%. Same-store sales rose 4%.      Profit in the quarter was 47 cents a share, excluding some items. Analysts estimated 43 cents on average.