Winter Holidays

Photo: Doug McMillon, president and CEO, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

The majority owner of Ollie’s Bargain Outlet is looking to reduce its stake in the company following a holiday season sales performance CEO Mark Butler characterized as thrilling.

Luxury dinnerware retailer Lenox is enjoying a feast of e-commerce delights with the aid of Oracle Commerce technology.

Lenox boosted e-commerce sales 26% during the 2015 holiday season compared to the two previous holiday seasons after deploying Oracle Commerce solutions that improved areas such as search results, recommendations, and targeted promotions. At the beginning of the holiday season, Lenox began targeting promotions for customer segments and launching more complex pricing strategies.

The offices of Retailing Today will be closed on Monday, Feb. 15,  for President's Day, and the RT Daily Edition will not publish. RT will resume normal business hours on Tuesday, Feb. 16.

Same-store sales literally fell off a cliff at Citi Trends in the waning days of the fourth quarter and the operator of 522 urban fashion stores is attributing the weakness to the federal government.

Same store sales literally fell off a cliff at Citi Trends in the waning days of the fourth quarter and the operator of 522 urban fashion stores is attributing the weakness to the federal government.

A combined 7.1% same-store sales decline at Sear and Kmart stores in the fourth quarter has parent company Sears Holdings vowing to undertake a wide range expense reduction and cash generating moves, including more store closings and asset sales.

Retailers may find themselves banished to the Island of the Misfit Toys if they do not improve their handling of returned holiday purchases.

According to new data from Kurt Salmon, it took an average of 13.3 days for retailers to credit returns to accounts during the 2015 holiday season. This marked an improvement from the prior year’s 16.8 days, but still far from customers’ expectation of about seven days.