Direct To Consumer (DTC)

Troubled retailer Abercrombie & Fitch continued to be out of favor with its teen target market in the fourth quarter, with declines in both income and sales. 

Looking ahead, the company said its priorities include increasing comparable sales trends in both its U.S. and international stores, making strategic investments in its omnichannel business, ongoing expense reductions, and selective expansion in high-growth international markets.

E-commerce home furnishings company Wayfair continues to lose money, but not as much as analysts had expected.

The company announced it posted a loss of 18 cents per share in the fourth quarter, below the 28-cent loss analysts forecasted. Wayfair generated $1.3 billion in net revenue last year, up 44% over 2013. Sales in its direct-retail segment, which consists of sales from five key brands, surged to $347 million as the number of active customers increased by 54%.

Birmingham, Ala. -- Bayer Properties has begun construction on the $66 million redevelopment of the historic Pizitz Building, located on the corner of 2nd Avenue North and 19th Street in downtown Birmingham, Alabama.

The building’s top six floors will be dedicated to residential space with 143 multi-family apartments. The Pizitz Building will also have a mezzanine level with modern, temporary office space, a ground level featuring a public urban market, and an attached seven-level parking garage.

New York -- Dolce & Gabbana will open a flagship store in the 15,000-sq.-ft. 155 Mercer Street building in the SoHo area of New York City.

Thor Equities leased the entire building to the Italian luxury fashion house, which plans to re-create the original brownstone façade.

Originally built in 1855 as Firemen’s Hall, the historical property was most recently home to dance performance venue the Joyce Theater. The four-level building includes 50 ft. of frontage on Mercer Street.
 

Chicago -- Expect another busy year of retail mergers and acquisitions, according to an annual survey of retail CFO’s by BDO USA. In the most bullish forecast for deal flow in the survey’s nine-year history, 16% of surveyed retail CFOs cite M&A activity as the growth tactic they are most heavily focused on for 2015, up from just 3% in 2014. Seventy-three percent of the CFOs expect the activity will take place primarily in the United States, and 15% expect Asia to see the most activity.

Goleta, Calif. - Deckers Brands is rolling out the company's first multi-brand e-commerce platform in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, Style X Deckers. The service, which has more than 100 SKUs of products from UGG, Teva, Sanuk and Hoka One One is expected to launch in five APAC countries during the first half of 2015.

For Los Angeles-based fashion retailer Forever 21, the journey from a single location on Figueroa Street in L.A. in 1984 to more than 680 global locations today has been transformative. Over the last three decades, the brand has not shied away from innovation and experimentation, implementing a range of different store sizes and concepts along the way: from smaller 5,000-sq.-ft. layouts in its early years, to larger 9,000-sq.-ft. concepts in the 2000s and a range of big-box stores that range up to 40,000 sq. ft.

Chillicothe, Ohio -- Petland has appointed former Walmart exec Tony Samples as VP of corporate stores. Samples will lead Petland's retail store division and oversee the company's merchandising and marketing efforts.  

"Tony brings extensive retail experience to Petland at a time when Petland is expanding its retail footprint," said Petland president and CEO Joe Watson.