Corporate Governance

Women’s lifestyle brand and retailer Vera Bradley is the latest company to feel the negative sales effects of weaning shoppers off promotions, but the strategic shift has done wonders for the company’s bottom line.

Douglas Tompkins, co-founder of The North Face and an ardent conservationist and outdoorsman, died following a kayaking accident in his adopted country of Chile. Tomkins, 72, was the co-founder of two clothing companies that would grow into multi-billion dollar enterprises. In addition to North Face, he was a co-founder, along with his wife at the time, of Esprit. “He flew airplanes, he climbed to the top of mountains all over the world,” his daughter Summer Tompkins Walker told the New York Times.

While athleisure apparel is still quite trendy these days, the creator of the trend, Lululemon Athletica, is struggling to grow profits as competitors threaten its value proposition.

For the third quarter ended Nov. 1, the company posted a profit of $53.2 million, or 38 cents a share, down from $60.5 million, or 42 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue rose 14% to $479.8 million. Same store sales rose 6% for the second quarter in a row on a constant-currency basis.

Executives from Staples and virtual reality firm Magic Leap have joined the strategic advisory board of leading online handbags, luggage and backpacks retailer eBags.

Mike Edwards, eBags president and CEO, said Faisal Masud, executive VP of global e-commerce at Staples, and Scott Henry, CFO at Magic Leap, would bring a wealth of wealth of entrepreneurial and operational experience and an understanding of what it takes to excel in a fast-paced technology to eBags as the newest members of the board.

Doug Tompkins, the founder of the North Face and Esprit apparel companies, died Tuesday in a kayaking accident in Chile. He was 72.

Tompkins was boating with others on a lake in Chile when his kayak capsized. Tompkins was rescued but spent a lengthy amount of time in the freezing water. He died of hypothermia in a hospital in Coyhaique.

Tompkins founded The North Face in 1964 as an outdoor outfitter and in 1968 he co-founded Esprit clothing, which would grow to do a billion dollars in sales. 

Women’s lifestyle brand and retailer Vera Bradley is the latest company to feel the negative sales effects of weaning shoppers off promotions, but the strategic shift has done wonders for the company’s bottom line.

Home Depot has revealed a new set of ambitious financial targets it expects to achieve in three years by focusing on a uniquely Home Depot strategy called, “interconnecting retail.”

Consumer packaged goods companies eager to keep pace with shoppers’ desire for product ingredient transparency have embraced a major initiative branded as SmartLabel.

SmartLabel is the name given to an initiative spearheaded by the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) that is designed to give consumers easy access to detailed information on ingredients and hundreds of other product attributes, such as whether food items contain ingredients from genetically modified sources.

The Children’s Place blamed unseasonably warm weather for its weak third quarter results and plans to close 200 stores by 2017 as part of its turnaround strategy.

For the third quarter ended Oct. 31, the retailer said same store sales fell 3%. The Children’s Place reported a profit of $38.5 million, or $1.88 a share, compared with a profit of $36.9 million, or $1.70 a share, in the prior year quarter. EPS was $1.93, up from $1.82. Sales rose 6.4% to $455.9 million.

Many mall retailers have been having a tough time lately attracting shoppers, and Christopher & Banks was not immune to struggles with weak traffic in the third quarter.

The women's specialty retailer posted a net loss of $0.3 million, or 1 cent per share, for the third quarter ended Oct. 31, versus a year-ago profit of $9 million, or 24 cents per share. Net sales totaled $103.6 million, as compared to $110.6 million for the prior year. Same-store sales decreased 6.5%.