Seasonal

Everyone knows that stores need extra staff during the holiday shopping rush, but there is a big difference between carefully scheduling employees when and where they are needed and simply adding bodies to a store’s headcount. San Francisco-based beauty retailer Sephora has come up with a solution: The company is expanding its use of the Ceridian Dayforce workforce management platform to adjust holiday staffing according to both historical sales data and current trends.

“We forecast the entire quarter’s sales and payroll,” explained Gino Filice, IT manager of Sephora.

With some 3,200 franchised, independently owned and corporate stores, the fast-growing Danish jewelry retailer Pandora needs to ensure customer relationship management (CRM) consistency throughout its operation — especially during the heavily promotional holiday season. It does so by using the Microsoft Dynamics CRM system and a retail portal based on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform.

Roughly two months removed from an initial public stock offering, Michaels CEO Chuck Rubin said the company is on track to implement a multi-year strategic plan following the release of second quarter results that showed broad based sales strength and healthy margins.

At a time of year when consumers are still caught up in end-of-summer barbecues and back-to-school shopping, retailers are getting caught up in the rush of holiday planning. Holiday sales can account for 20% to 40% of a retailer’s total annual sales, according to the National Retail Federation, and a successful holiday can turn around a bad year or make a good year even better.

Furniture doesn’t leap to mind as a common holiday gift item. But by optimizing its customer experience for mobile devices and utilizing advanced personalization, Chattanooga, Tennessee-based online retailer Smart Furniture (which also runs a single flagship store) is making consumers think of the home for the holidays.

“Last year, we had the single biggest traffic pattern shift in company history,” said T.J. Gentle, president and CEO of Smart Furniture.

New York -- Fashion powerhouse Zara, owned by Spain’s Inditex, used social media to apologize after complaints poured in via Twitter that the retailer was selling a piece of clothing that closely resembled a uniform worn in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. The item in question, called the “Sheriff,” was a children’s blue-and-white striped top with a prominent six-pointed yellow star.

Price cuts made to clear seasonal merchandise were a primary driver of Chico’s lower net income for the second quarter ended Aug. 2.

The company posted net income of $30.1 million for the quarter, a drop of 31% from $43.6 million in the year-ago period. Net sales for the quarter were $671.1 million, an increase of 3.3% from $649.5 million in the previous year, but driven primarily by sales at 98 net new stores. Same-store sales inched up by 0.3%.

Sandy Kennedy, president of the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA), has offered her two cents on the standoff surrounding the union negotiations at the West Coast ports.

Kennedy addressed a letter to the heads of the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), speaking on behalf of retailers who are experiencing uncertainty and instability over the ongoing conflict.