Events

Location: Cincinnati

Size: 1.1 million sq. ft.

Developer: Co-developed by Steiner + Associates and Bucksbaum Retail Properties
Major tenants: Dillard’s Department Store, CineBistro, a 135-room hotel, 220 luxury residential units and 100,000 sq. ft. of office space.

Status: Construction is scheduled to begin in early 2014 with the opening scheduled for summer 2015.

Retail executives and suppliers meet at annual networking event

Business partnering was the top priority at Chain Store Age’s 11th annual Executive SPECS, held in November at the Boca Raton Resort & Club, Boca Raton, Fla. 

Designed as a high-level networking forum for retailers and suppliers in store planning, design, construction and facilities management, Executive SPECS combines dynamic keynote speakers with face-to-face “information exchange” meetings with suppliers, sponsor presentations and informal discussions.

Animated forms that smile and wink add tech twist

A must-see fashion exhibit at The Brooklyn Museum in New York City is doing double duty, offering a retrospective of the 30-year-plus career of avant-garde designer Jean Paul Gaultier, while also providing a showcase for a collection of show-stealing, crowd-pleasing mannequins. But what do mannequins in a museum exhibit have to do with retail?

SuperSaturday raises IT awareness and funds for kids in need

Of the many reasons retail IT professionals attend the annual National Retail Federation (NRF) Convention & Expo each January in New York City, keeping current with all the latest industry topics and trends is surely at the top. Each year, RetailROI independently offers SuperSaturday, a one-day event held the Saturday before the official Sunday kickoff to the NRF Convention.

By Ike Boruchow, analyst, Sterne Agee, New York

This year, Black Friday gave us a taste of what to expect for the remainder of the holiday selling season: intense competition, deep discounts, and choppy mall traffic. Earlier store openings drove heavy traffic, which dissipated and then bounced through the day.

San Francisco – West Elm is scheduled to open the company's first U.K. store in London on Dec. 5. The 12,000-sq.-ft. store will feature furniture, textiles, accessories and gifts, as well as a West Elm Market shop-in-shop and coffee shop. The store will employ 30 full- and part-time sales associates.

The London store will include a Local Gallery Wall featuring art from U.K. artists sourced through Etsy, the online marketplace for handmade or vintage items. The wall is curated by Will Taylor of the blog Bright.Bazaar.

New York -- Overall spending over Black Friday weekend was expected to hit $57.4 billion, according to the National Retail Federation, which is down 2.8% from last year’s $59.1 billion. It was the first spending decline on a Black Friday weekend since 2009. But there was some good news for retailers: Online sales soared over the holiday weekend.

The NRF estimated that 141 million Americans shopped during the four-day weekend, up 1.2% from a year ago.

The Army & Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES) announced that Lt. Gen. Samuel D. Cox will serve as chairman of the exchange’s board of directors effective immediately.

Cox was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Manpower, Personnel and Services on Nov. 5, and will replace Lt. Gen. Darrell Jones, who served as chairman of the Exchange board of directors since April 2013 and retired from the Air Force on Nov. 21.

Sears will be participating in KIIS FM's Jingle Ball 2013, Friday, Dec. 6 at LA Live in Los Angeles. The main event will include a Sears Style fashion show in the Jingle Ball Village.

Retailers were effective at getting a record number of Americans to visit stores and Web sites over the weekend, but persuading them to spend money was a different story, according to data released by the National Retail Federation Sunday afternoon.