Apparel

Grapevine, Texas -- Grapevine Mills, the largest outlet and value retail shopping destination in North Texas, welcomed Torrid to its retail line-up of more than 180 stores, and will soon enhance its selection when Steve Madden opens in October.  

Continued softness in mall traffic and lower-than-expected sales from its September fashion show have prompted Christopher & Banks to cut its sales forecast for the third quarter of fiscal 2014.

With average in-store purchases exceeding online sales by two and three times, popular online-only retailers, including Birchbox, Piperlime, Bonobos and Blank Label are continuing their expansion into physical storefronts, further accelerating the trend of online retail concepts expanding their omnichannel sales strategy to include physical locations.

Levi Strauss has added Jenny Ming to its board of directors. Ming is president and CEO of Charlotte Russe, a specialty retailer of apparel and accessories catering to young women, with more than 500 stores across the US, a position she has held since October 2009.

Chico’s is looking to evolve its omnichannel retailing strategy, and to that end, has partnered with Tyco, a leading global provider of retail performance and security tools and technology, to address inventory accuracy and visibility challenges in 13 Soma Intimates pilot stores.

Tyco's RFID-based Inventory Intelligence tool is designed to enable store assistants to access accurate, real-time inventory information in one place to better manage their deep merchandise assortment and to drive increased sales and shopper satisfaction, according to the company.

Wolverine Worldwide has appointed Melissa A. Howell SVP of global human resources. Howell will report directly to chairman, CEO and president Blake Krueger.

Howell has more than 24 years of experience in human resource management with General Motors, one of the world's largest automobile companies, with more than 200,000 employees in more than 150 countries. Howell most recently served as SVP of global human resources and also held numerous other human resource leadership roles during her time with the company.  

Bon-Ton plans to close its Bon-Ton store in the Clearview Mall in Butler, Pennsylvania, and its Elder-Beerman store in the Raleigh Mall in Beckley, West Virginia. The company will not renew these leases, which terminate Jan. 31, 2015.

The closings will affect approximately 38 and 39 store employees at the Clearview Mall and Raleigh Mall locations, respectively.

Franklin, Tenn. – Mobile POS technology is growing in popularity among retailers, particularly in the enterprise space, according to the new Mobile POS Software Market Share report from global research and advisory firm IHL.

New York -- Uniqlo celebrate the opening of its store at Roosevelt Field, Garden City, New York, on Oct. 3.

The Roosevelt Field store is the retailer’s ninth store in the state of New York, and its 32nd in the United States.

Uniqlo currently more than 1,400 stores in 16 markets worldwide. The company is a brand of Japan’s Fast Retailing Co, whose brands also include Comptoir des Cotonniers, GU, Helmut Lang, J Brand, Princesse tam.tam, Theory.

New York – Coach Inc. has leveraged the MicroStrategy Analytics Platform and MicroStrategy Mobile to produce automated reporting that provides anytime, anywhere visibility down to the store level. Coach has built an interactive mobile application using MicroStrategy Mobile that provides its retail teams with the ability to examine sales trends for any given geography, including at the individual store level, with a swipe or tap on their iPad devices.