eCommerce

Fort Worth — Market Street – The Woodlands, a mixed-use project north of Houston is welcoming four new tenants. Kate Spade will open a 1,907-sq.-ft. designer fashion store this fall. Also coming this fall are two more clothing stores: a 2,500-sq.-ft. Lucky Brand and a 3,719-sq.-ft. Vineyard Vines.

Just two weeks ago, Tumi opened a travel, business and lifestyle accessories shop.

Pittsburgh – American Eagle Outfitters is lowering its earnings outlook for the second quarter of fiscal 2013 due to what the retailer characterizes as weak sales and margins. The company now forecasts earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter of about $0.10, down significantly from $0.21 in the second quarter of last year.

Los Angeles – Fandango and Rue La La have both begun offering customers the option of using the V.me digital wallet service from Visa to pay at online checkout. V.me eliminates the need to enter billing, shipping and account information, and instead allows consumers to pay for a purchase by entering their user name and password.

Other e-commerce merchants that have recently started accepting V.me payments include Crutchfield, Modnique, and Sonic Electronix.

Seattle – Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos is purchasing The Washington Post from media holdings firm The Washington Post. Co. for $250 million in cash. He is making the purchase privately and Amazon.com is not involved in the transaction. Bezos will reportedly take the currently public Washington Post private.

Naperville, Ill. – OfficeMax had a generally difficult second quarter of 2013, with declining total and same-store sales and a net loss. The retailer is also predicting more disappointing results for the upcoming two fiscal quarters.

Waban, Mass. – Amazon.com was the top-ranked company across 19 industries in the 2013 Web Experience Ratings from Temkin Group. Amazon.com had a score of 77%, almost 21 percentage points higher than the retail industry average.

Other retailers in the top 10 included eBay, tied for fifth place at 70%, and QVC, tied for eighth place at 69%. Taco Bell and Kmart earned ratings that were at least 15 points below the retail industry average. Old Navy was the only retailer to have a double-digit score increase from last year.

NAPERVILLE, Ill. — OfficeMax has reported weak second-quarter retail sales as the merger with Office Depot, which reported weak second-quarter sales last week, moves forward.

NEW YORK — Delia’s, a multichannel retailer that primarily markets to teenage girls, has hired Daphne Smith as the company’s EVP of operations, reporting to CEO Tracy Gardner.

Smith was previously with J.Crew for 16 years, working in various roles including SVP of direct. She has spent the past 18 months at New York & Company as the company’s SVP of e-commerce.

MINNEAPOLIS — Target is getting ready to expand its rapidly evolving online beauty business with its planned acquisition of the DermStore Beauty Group. 

Global luxury lifestyle brand Michael Kors Holdings Limited had an exceptional fiscal 2014 first quarter ended June 29 with a total revenue of $641 million, a 54.5% increase from $414.9 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2013.

Retail net sales increased 51.5% to $325.7 million driven by a 27.3% increase in comparable store sales and 75 net new store openings since the end of the first quarter of fiscal 2013. Wholesale net sales increased 59.3% to $290.6 million and licensing revenue increased 40.7% to $24.6 million.