Department Store

The resumption of top line growth at Stage Stores enabled the operator of 858 stores to reduce the size of its third quarter net loss, but CEO Michael Glazer is taking a cautious view of the holidays.

New York - Amazon is once again tops in online customer satisfaction, but its leadership is eroding, according to a study by Answers.com, a provider of  cloud-based customer experience solutions. Amazon is down four points from its 2013 score of 84 (on a 100-point scale), and leads QVC.com and Netflix by just one point. 

Toronto — Hudson’s Bay Company announced the appointment of Jon K. Nordeen to the position of CIO, effective November 2014.
  Nordeen joins HBC with more than 25 years of information systems and management experience. Most recently, he served at Kohl’s Department Stores in several roles including executive VP merchandise planning, executive VP administration, and executive VP CIO.
 

Toronto, Canada – The bad news continued for Sears Canada Inc. during the third quarter of fiscal 2014. Following the announcement by parent company Sears Holding that it would sell off most of its 51% ownership stake to shareholders and reports that J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. will end its agreement to issue credit cards for Sears Canada in November 2015, Sears Canada reported a net loss of $118.7 million, significantly larger than the $48.8 million net loss reported the same period a year earlier.

LONDON — Macy's continues to innovate its omnichannel experience with  the launch of a new iOS app that incorporates image recognition and visual search software. The tool allows consumers to search through thousands of inventory items by simply using a picture snapped from their iPhone to find similar products available at Macys.com.

The photo search app was designed in the Macy's Idea Labs facility in San Francisco, and the software for the image recognition was developed and supplied by Cortexica, a leader mobile image recognition.


The fourth quarter is off to a very strong start at TJX Companies, according to CEO Carol Meyrowitz, who expects an exciting mix of initiatives to yield a low single digit fourth quarter comp increase and profit growth.

Framingham, Mass. – The TJX Companies Inc. met Wall Street expectations with net income of $594.96 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2014, down 4% from $622.65 million in the same quarter the prior year. Net sales rose 5% to $7.37 billion from $6.98 billion, short of Wall Street expectations.

New York, N.Y. - Just more than half of all Americans (51%) plan to purchase toys as gifts in the upcoming holiday season, nearly consistent with the prior year's intent (50%). Not surprisingly, according to a new Harris Poll of 2,205 U.S, adults, parents of a child under the age of 18 are twice as likely to purchase toys as those without children younger than the age of 18 (82% compared 41%, respectively).