Department Store

Online checkout problems are indicative of heavy e-commerce traffic, but still were not what Amazon.com hoped to see in the first hours of Prime Day.   According to multiple media reports, a glitch was causing problems for some U.S. and U.K. consumers attempting to check out their Amazon purchases the morning of Tuesday, July 12. Numerous shoppers tweeted their frustrations using hashtags such as #PrimeDay and #PrimeDayFail. A sampling of tweet complaints includes:  

Consumers have spoken, and they have a favorite chain when it comes to buying appliance products.  

DDR fired president and CEO David Oakes and replaced him with 40-year industry veteran Thomas August. A company press release says Oakes’ termination was unrelated to financial or operating results, though DDR showed a net loss of $93.5 million in 2015 after posting income of $91.3 million the previous year.  

Sales and purchases of shopping center assets at Kimco Realty Corp during the second quarter of 2016 exceeded $1 billion dollars, according to details released by the company.   The Hyde Park, New York-based Kimco sold 22 Canadian shopping centers totaling 28 million sq. ft. for $474.4 million, which included the assignment of $213.5 million of existing mortgage debt. It also disposed of 12 unencumbered U.S. properties totaling 1.5 million sq. ft. for $220.5 million.  

Barnes & Noble has previously ventured into new product categories such as e-readers and toys and games, but the bookseller is going further outside its established niche than ever before.  

Nordstrom remains in expansion mode with its Nordstrom Rack division.   A 26,000-sq. ft. Nordstrom Rack is scheduled to open in spring 2017, at CityPlace, a 100-acre, master-planned development in Woodbury, Minn.   The property is owned and managed by Elion Partners, a Florida-based real estate investment firm.     

Los Angeles’s Broadway Theater District was the first such entertainment strip to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Is the famed alley of theater palaces now poised to make retail history?  

Beset by declining sales, growing competition and changing consumer tastes, Ralph Lauren has launched an ambitious turnaround plan that includes a heavy brand emphasis.