Retail

For millennial shoppers, Victoria’s Secret is tops, followed by Sephora and Nike.   That’s according to a report from Conde Nast Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which surveyed the popularity of brands among millennial shoppers, reported Bloomberg.   

VF Corp. is getting a new technology leader.   Martin Schneider, the company’s VP and CIO will retire at the end of 2017. Sandra Harris, VP, global business technology, will succeed Schneider as VP and CIO, effective Jan. 1, 2018. Harris also has been appointed to VF’s senior leadership team.  

The game is back on at City Sports Inc.    In 2015, the Boston-based sporting goods retailer filed for bankruptcy and closed its 26 stores. Shortly afterwards, two Wharton-trained brothers, Brent and Blake Sonnek-Schmelz, bought City Sports' intellectual property rights at a bankruptcy auction for $400,000.    

The user experience is critical to e-commerce success, a factor that makes snafus in Web performance unacceptable.    Performance is so critical that even a 100-millisecond delay in website load time can hurt conversion rates by 7%. Meanwhile, a two-second delay in Web page load time increase bounce rates by 103%, according to the “State of Online Retail Performance,” a report from Akamai Technologies.   

Sand Lake Corners North, a 151,487-sq.-ft. community center in Orlando, Florida, has been put up for sale. Transwestern is serving as broker for the property at 8115 – 8379 S. John Young Parkway.   According to Transwestern, tenants with long-term leases fill more than 90% of the center, which is located in Orlando’s tourist corridor and is surrounded by corporate campuses, including the SouthPark Center that comprises 2.9 million sq. ft. of office space.  

Men’s Wearhouse and Jos. A. Bank are not just enhancing customer experiences across their websites — they are personalizing them.   

West Elm is expanding in Texas.   The retailer, a division of William-Sonoma, will open its first Fort Worth location this summer. The 10,502-sq.-ft. store will be located at West 7th Fort Worth, an open-air center in the heart of the ‘Cultural District” in Fort Worth, Texas.    The West 7th development encompasses nearly five blocks of pedestrian-friendly urban elements. It is managed by Vestar.  

Target Corp. is losing a senior digital executive.   Casey Carl, chief innovation and strategy officer, is leaving the retailer, effective May 5. His departure, first reported by The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, comes as the chain has been reducing some of its innovation initiatives, including a store of the future with robots, to focus on efforts that have a faster payback.