Retail

New York & Company CEO Gregory Scott is pleased with the company’s holiday performance. The operator of 514 stores has navigated through what it called a challenging retail environment to build on the momentum it generated in the first three quarters of the year.

Comparable-store sales for the nine-week period ended Jan. 4 increased 1%. Additionally, the specialty apparel chain narrowed its outlook for the 13-week fourth quarter ending Feb. 1.

Redwood Shores, Calif. -- To extend its “commerce anywhere” strategy, Stage Stores has implemented Oracle Commerce. The initiative, completed in less than six months, provided the retailer with a new e-commerce engine, along with guided search and recommendation solutions, all before the 2012 holiday shopping season kicked off.

Walmart CEO Bill Simon was among a group of six senior excutives added to the National Retail Federations board of directors.

Simon will be joined by Beall’s CEO Steve Knopik, J.C. Penney CEO Myron Ullman, Tractor Supply CEO Greg Sandfort, SAP SVP Lori Mitchell-Kell and Utah Retail Merchants Association president Dave Davis.

The retailers were elected to the board Sunday, the opening day of NRF’s 103rd Annual Convention and EXPO. They will serve three-year terms.

Austin, Texas -- End-to-end merchandise optimization solution-provider Revionics announced a multi-year agreement with Victoria Supermarkets for its Price Optimization solution rollout.

Victoria Supermarkets operates 83 markets in Russia and is owned by the DIXY Group, one of Russia’s largest national retail operators in the food retail market.   

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.

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.

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.

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