Department Store

Boston -- Gordon Brothers Group announced the appointment of John Dattilo as director, real estate of the commercial & industrial division, to the Chicago office. Dattilo will oversee the analysis, acquisition and sale of industrial real estate assets.

Phoenix – Vestar announced the addition of Bradley Parks, director of due diligence to its team. Parks will be responsible for overseeing all due diligence activities for Vestar’s shopping center acquisition opportunities.

Over the past three years Vestar has completed over $1 billion in acquisitions throughout the western U.S. and was recently recognized as the 4th largest acquirer of shopping centers in the United States.

Vertical specialty denim retailer Lucky Brand is bringing together disparate parts of its business onto one platform.

Lucky Brand has implemented NetSuite OneWorld to run a variety of omnichannel business processes across its consumer- and business-facing operations. These include inventory management, procure-to-pay, fixed assets, and multi-currency and multi-tax compliance management.

The National Retail Federation confirmed what many retailers already knew and made a downward revision to a holiday forecast that initially called for 3.7% growth.

Citing what it called “unforeseen events,” the National Retail Federation (NRF) said sales during November and December increased 3% to $626 billion, down from an earlier forecast which envisioned growth of 3.7%.

The downsizing continues at Sears Holding Corp.

The troubled retailer is closing what it described as a “very small percentage” of its overall number of Kmart and Sears stores across the country.

"Every year we evaluate our store portfolio and make changes based on leases or stores with poor performance," company spokesman Howard Riefs said in a Reuters report.

The exact number of stores to be shuttered has not been disclosed. But Reifs also said Kmart would account for the majority of the closures.

The Bon-Ton Stores says its holiday sales were negatively affected by unseasonably warm weather in November.

The company announced that its same-store sales for the nine-week holiday period ended Jan. 2 decreased 1.6%. Total sales for the combined months of November and December were $784.4 million, a decrease of 1.5% from sales of $796.4 million in the prior year nine-week holiday period.

Sundance is gearing up for major retail expansion.

The lifestyle apparel, art and home furnishings brand, founded by Robert Redford in 1969, has long operated a successful catalog and e-commerce site, along with a handful of physical stores. But in remarks at the recent ICR investor conference, CEO Matey Erdos said the company is planning to open up to 150 locations in the coming years.

There is a growing disconnect between shoppers’ growing in-store service expectations and retailers’ current service offerings and focus for the coming year.