Apparel

Redwood Shores, Calif. -- To extend its “commerce anywhere” strategy, Stage Stores has implemented Oracle Commerce. The initiative, completed in less than six months, provided the retailer with a new e-commerce engine, along with guided search and recommendation solutions, all before the 2012 holiday shopping season kicked off.

New York -- VeriFone Systems announced that The Jones Group Inc. has selected VeriFone solutions to enable mobile payment acceptance and enhance customer experience for its internationally recognized brands, including Jones New York and Nine West.

VeriFone will upgrade the brands’ payment environments with its PAYware Mobile e210 mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) solution and the MX 915, an NFC-enabled, multi-media payment terminal.
 

Tysons Corner, Va. -- MicroStrategy Inc. announced that Guess has unveiled a new mobile app for its customers powered by the MicroStrategy Alert Platform.

The NRF 2014 Conference & Exposition kicked things off Sunday, Jan. 12 with sessions examining both how social media will continue to evolve as a dominant means of customer interaction and how the brick-and-mortar store will remain a highly relevant part of the retail environment in the 21st century. Let’s look at a few highlights from each session.

Picturing Social Success

New York -- In a hugely attended address kicking off the National Retail Federation’s 2014 “Big Show” at Javits Center in New York City, shopping center developer Rick Caruso challenged attendees – most of them retailers from the technology side of their companies – to remember the “human” side of retail.

Lululemon planned to start 2014 with a new CEO and flat comparable store sales for the fourth quarter. Despite being on track to hit its numbers, however, a significant dip in traffic and sales in January has prompted the company to cut its fourth quarter forecast.

Groupon has expanded its fashion and apparel footprint with its acquisition of Ideeli, a leading online flash fashion retailer, for $43 million in cash.

Ideeli was founded in 2007 and its members number in the millions.

Guess has unveiled a new mobile app for its customers powered by the MicroStrategy Alert Platform.

The new Guess app, which is available simultaneously on Apple iOS and Android devices, offers a personalized high-interactivity loyalty channel between Guess and its customers through their mobile phones. It merges social loyalty with traditional loyalty by rewarding brand ambassador customers for extending Guess campaigns and promotions through their social networks (Facebook, Twitter, SMS, or email).

New York & Company CEO Gregory Scott is pleased with the company’s holiday performance. The operator of 514 stores has navigated through what it called a challenging retail environment to build on the momentum it generated in the first three quarters of the year.

Comparable-store sales for the nine-week period ended Jan. 4 increased 1%. Additionally, the specialty apparel chain narrowed its outlook for the 13-week fourth quarter ending Feb. 1.

When specialty retail apparel chain Express issued its fourth quarter guidance in early December 2013, it anticipated a promotional holiday season as well as a slowdown in traffic after the Thanksgiving week. What the company encountered, however, was a drop in traffic that was even deeper than expected because consumers waited until much closer to Christmas to shop.