Department Store

Boston -- Clothing and accessories retailer Metro Park has filed for bankruptcy and is closing all 69 stores nationwide.

The store closings and liquidations begin on May 6. Gordon Bros. Group and Hilco Merchant Resources are running the going-out-of business sales for the retailer.

Based in Los Angeles, Metro Park was founded in 2000. Specializing in upscale trendy fashions, Metro Park has been feeling the heat of increased competition from such fast-fashion retailers as H&M.
 

City of Commerce, Calif. -- Los Angeles outlet shopping mall Citadel Outlets has named a new marketing team.
       
Traci Markel has been named marketing director and Simone O’Connor has been named marketing and special events manager.  The Citadel marketing team also includes Veronica Garzaro, marketing and domestic tourism manager, and Kristina Carlson, international tourism sales manager.
       

New York City -- Gap said its chief design director, Patrick Robinson, is leaving the company effective immediately. He had been executive VP of Gap Global Design for Adult and Body for four years.

The company said it will conduct a search for a successor.

Pam Wallack, head of the Gap Creative Center, made the decision to oust Robinson and will manage the design teams in the interim.

His departure follows a series of management shuffles and organizational changes aimed at reviving sagging sales of the brand.
 

NEW YORK —  Consumers took advantage of Easter promotions and helped drive up sales at leading U.S. department stores.

Macy's Inc. reported total sales of $1.924 billion for the four weeks ended April 30, an increase of 10.9% compared with total sales of $1.735 billion in the four weeks ended May 1. The company’s same-store sales were up 10.8%, beating Macy’s guidance for comps to be up between 8% and 9%.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Gap Inc. announced that Patrick Robinson, EVP Gap global design for adult and body, is leaving the company, effective immediately.

“After spending the last three months in New York with the Creative team, I have made the decision to make a change within our Gap Adult design team,” said Pam Wallack, head of the Gap global creative center in New York.

New York City -- Retailers reported strong April sales that were boosted by the late Easter holiday, which fell on April 24, three weeks later than last year. Same-store sales rose 8.9% at the 25 retailers tracked by Thomson Reuters, compared with expectations for an 8.2% increase. But the good news was tempered as retailers acknowledged that shoppers are under increasing pressure from rising gas prices and other cost increases.

NEW YORK — Apparel retailers across the board experienced strong sales gains in April, thanks in large part to the inclusion of Easter in this year’s reporting period, leading many to raise their quarterly earnings guidance.

I’m not much of a follower of astrology and the signs of the zodiac, but I do know that 2011 is the Year of the Rabbit on the Chinese calendar.

It seems somehow fortuitous that speed and agility define a year that is all about economic recovery. And retail is moving forward at a rate that, while not exactly hare-like, is at least faster than the proverbial tortoise.