Retail

Swire Properties Inc, one of South Florida's leading international developers of urban real estate, along with retail co-developers Whitman Family Development and Simon Property Group, announced new tenants set to join Brickell City Centre's, a 500,000-sq.-ft- open-air shopping center under construction in the heart of Miami’s Brickell neighborhood.

Macy’s announced that a Bloomingdale’s store will open in spring 2017 in Kuwait as part of the company’s strategic partnership with Al Tayer Group LLC.

This will be Bloomingdale’s second international location (the first opened in Dubai in 2010) and ahead of Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s stores scheduled to open in Abu Dhabi in 2018 – all in partnership with Al Tayer.

Mobile technology is helping shoppers at Scranton, Pennsylvania-based Gerrity’s Super Market Inc. check out much more conveniently.

Gerrity’s is beta testing a checkout app from mobile grocery solution provider Skip. The app, which Gerrity’s is the first retailer to test, lets customers scan items with their phone and place it in their cart or basket. For produce or other items that need to be weighed, shoppers place the goods on Skip scales that weight them and present a barcode for the price.

Pottery Barn Kids is looking to attract more new parents by unveiling its first nursery collection.

The new collection is designed in collaboration with celebrated celebrity stylists and fashion design team Emily Current and Meritt Elliott. The collection includes the XO Nursery that features a glamorous black and white color palette, graphic prints and patterns and bold accents. The Star Nursery features dreamy pink and neutral colors with layers of soft denim and gold accents. 

Boston -- The Wilder Companies announced that Shelley M. Anderson has been named director of new business development, a newly created position for the company. Anderson will be responsible for developing retail real estate opportunities to expand the company’s portfolio of open-air centers throughout the eastern portion of the U.S. She will focus on existing center acquisitions, exploring joint venture opportunities with existing owners and growing the company’s burgeoning third-party services business.

Abandoned carts get plenty of attention. Retailers run reports on lost revenue from abandons. Email campaigns start hitting customers as soon as an hour after they abandon. A day later, another email comes.

Targeting cart abandoners is definitely effective. Statistics show that as much as 25% of lost revenue can be regained via abandoned cart emails. But what if you didn't lose that revenue in the first place?

We'll never live in a zero abandonment world. But we can definitely limit the chances of abandonment.

Starbucks Corp. reported first quarter earnings and same-store sales that topped expectations. But the coffee giant gave a soft earnings outlook for its current quarter.

Starbucks reported better-than-expected earnings of $687.6 million for the period ended Dec. 27, 2015, down from $983.1 billion a year earlier. The prior-year period was boosted by a hefty $391 million gain related to a joint venture.

Revenue rose 12% to $5.37 billion. Analysts had forecast $5.39 billion in revenue.

As always, it seems to have blurred by before it even started, but NRF 2016 is over. As the retail industry collectively unpacks it bags, sorts through business cards and decompresses, I’d like to offer a few key trends I observed during my own three days of Big Show immersion.

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