Department Store

The National Retail Federation and e-digital consultancy FitforCommerce have launched a first-of-its-kind Omnichannel Retail Index to help retailers benchmark against industry best practices.

Kohl’s is giving its millennial customers some exciting new cold weather merchandise to think about as the fall season gets well under way.

The retailer is debuting the Madden Girl collection, featuring fashion, cold weather boots, accessories and outerwear. The collection will be available Oct. 15 in Kohl’s stores and on Kohls.com. The assortment will include the brand’s cold weather boots as well as exclusive designs for the fall season.

The mandate for retailers to accept chip-enabled, EMV-compliant payment cards starts Oct. 1. But how ready an individual retailer is may depend on what type of retailer they are.

At least that’s according to a new study from The Strawhecker Group (TSG), which shows that a leading 69% of shoe stores and 59% of department stores have EMV-ready POS terminals .

On the lower end of the spectrum, 24% of bookstores and 23% of stationery stores have EMV-ready terminals. Previous TSG research shows that 27% of all retailers will be EMV-ready by Oct. 1.

October will be over in a flash, and with it, all eyes will be on the holiday season, which is measured from Nov. 1 through Dec. 31.

The 2015 retail calendar has several distinctions, as we saw Memorial Day fall on the earliest possible date and Labor Day on the latest possible date. This holiday season, there are 28 days between Thanksgiving (not counting the actual day) and Christmas, which is an average amount for the period separating the two holidays.

Location: Minnetonka, Minnesota

Size: 155,000 sq. ft.

Owner: 1700 Plymouth LLC (a joint venture, including co-developers Paster Properties LLC and Bader Development LLC)

Key Tenants: Signed lease with Highland Bank, and currently in negotiations with several retailers

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A strong dollar and tumbling gas prices made Costco’s fourth quarter sales results seem weak. They weren’t and now the company plans to open 12 more clubs before year end.

The top executive at Gap Inc.’s fastest growing division, Old Navy, has resigned to become CEO of Ralph Lauren.

Gap Inc. said that Stefan Larsson would step down as global president of Old Navy effective October 2, 2015, and the division would be led on an interim basis by Jill Stanton, executive VP of global product at Old Navy.