Department Store

Minneapolis – Best Buy Co Inc. has added service from the Curbside mobile shopping app to several stores in the Bay Area, including San Francisco and San Jose. Curbside enables consumers to purchase items from local retailers and then pick them up outside of local stores with deliveries directly to their cars.

Luxury online retailer Gilt Groupe has been preparing for an IPO for a year now, but didn’t have enough cash. Now the retailer says it has raised another $50 million from venture backers.

Founded in 2007, Gilt is a New York-based e-commerce retailer that holds flash sales of discounted luxury items from clothing to home décor. The $50 million infusion brings Gilt’s total amount raised to about $250 million.

New York -- The consumer electronics and furniture sectors of the retail industry can look forward to growth in 2015, while the apparel sector faces a more mixed outlook. That was the message sounded by CIT Commercial Services executives during a roundtable discussion, "Everyone Looks Good in the Black: Retailers in the Economic Rebound,” part of the CIT Executive Insights series.

During the discussion, each CIT executive offered their views on the top trends they see ahead in various sectors of the retail market:

Ann Arbor, Mich. - Customer satisfaction with retail is down for the first time in four years. According to a report by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), all brick-and-mortar retail categories show weakening or flat customer satisfaction for the fourth quarter of 2014.  Internet retail satisfaction, however, is up from the same quarter in 2013.

Customer satisfaction with retail is on the decline for the first time in four years, according to a report by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI).

The report says brick-and-mortar retail show weakening or flat customer satisfaction, while Internet retail is up from a year ago.

Minneapolis – Target Corp. is reportedly localizing the assortments at its smaller-footprint Target Express stores to a high degree.  The Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune reported that since opening its first Target Express in the Dinkytown neighborhood of Minnesota in summer 2014, the discounter has carefully considered local customer demographics when stocking shelves.

Armonk, N.Y. - Consumers headed online for their Valentine’s Day shopping this year. According to IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark data, during Valentine’s week (Feb. 7 – 13) online shopping rose 10.2% from the same period in 2014.

In addition to overall sales, consumers ramped up their shopping efforts the week leading up to Valentine’s Day. Growth was seen in key verticals including:

Mahwah, N.J. -- Ascena Retail Group is eliminating its fledgling boys brand, Brothers, as part of a strategic review of its Justice business. Ascena launched the Brothers brand about three years ago as a way to enter the tween boys market. The company created Brothers stores inside some of its Justice stores.

Operations related to the Brothers brand are expected to be fully wound down by the end of the company’s fiscal year.