eCommerce

Lululemon planned to start 2014 with a new CEO and flat comparable store sales for the fourth quarter. Despite being on track to hit its numbers, however, a significant dip in traffic and sales in January has prompted the company to cut its fourth quarter forecast.

Supervalu has elected Gerald Storch as chair of its board of directors. The appointment comes after Robert Miller, who has chaired the boar since March 2013, announced his resignation.

New York -- A new IBM study of more than 30,000 global consumers found that consumers are willing to share their personal information with retailers, particularly if they get good value in exchange.

According to the findings, the percentage of consumers willing to share their current location via GPS with retailers nearly doubled year-over-year to 36%. Thirty-eight percent of consumers would provide their mobile number for the purpose of receiving text messages and 32% would share their social handles with retailers.

Groupon has expanded its fashion and apparel footprint with its acquisition of Ideeli, a leading online flash fashion retailer, for $43 million in cash.

Ideeli was founded in 2007 and its members number in the millions.

Big 5 Sporting Goods announced that their fourth-quarter sales results were affected by a lower demand year-over-year for firearms and ammunition products as well as a highly promotional retail holiday environment.  

The company reported net sales of $248 million, an increase of 1.8% from $243.6 million for the prior-year quarter. Same-store sales decreased 0.5% for the quarter versus the prior year period.

The NRF 2014 Conference & Exposition kicked things off Sunday, Jan. 12 with sessions examining both how social media will continue to evolve as a dominant means of customer interaction and how the brick-and-mortar store will remain a highly relevant part of the retail environment in the 21st century. Let’s look at a few highlights from each session.

Picturing Social Success

eBay Enterprise, an eBay company and leading global provider of omnichannel solutions, has unveiled a ship-from-store SaaS initiative that retailers can deploy within 99 days to most effectively leverage their physical store inventories while gaining advantages in margin and shipping cost.

New York -- Following news that luxury giant Neiman Marcus experienced network breaches over the holiday shopping season, similar to those of Target Corp., unidentified sources told Reuters that at least three other attacks on well-known merchants could be revealed in the coming weeks.