Sales & Marketing

New York City -- Abercrombie & Fitch’s flagship store on Fifth Avenue in New York City will be temporarily closed after a two-alarm fire last night damaged the building.

More than 25 units and 125 firefighters responded to the blaze, which began about 11 p.m. local time last night.

Target took it to some leading brands in its weekly ad on Sunday where it devoted a full page to a side-by-side price comparison between its Up&Up brand and leaders of their respective categories such as Clorox, Similac, Reynolds Wrap, Tums, Jergens and Nyquil. It was the second week in a row Target has promoted Up&Up in its weekly circular except last week, the brand was featured on the cover with a reminder that Up&Up offers “unbeatable prices on over 900 quality products every day.”

In the price comparison from this past week, featured brands included:

Hollywood, Fla. -- Perry Ellis said it has opened a men’s fashion store in Seminole Paradise at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino.

NEW YORK -- BrandSpark International, along with Better Homes and Gardens, released the top shopper trends from the third annual Best New Product Award (BNPA) American Shopper Study, which surveyed more than 63,000 Americans.

New York City -- Information Builders, a provider of business intelligence solutions, announced that Helzberg Diamonds has standardized on the WebFocus BI platform to provide advanced analysis and reporting capabilities to managers at 230 stores across the United States.

New York City -- Total retail sales (excluding autos) grew by 5.5% year-over-year, on par with December’s growth rate, and slightly higher than November’s, according to MasterCard Advisors’ SpendingPulse. SpendingPulse reports on national retail and services sales and is based on aggregate sales activity in the MasterCard payments network, coupled with survey-based estimates for all other payment forms

Wow! Did you catch Lady Gaga at the Grammy Awards Sunday night? She received the award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance and Best Pop Vocal Album just days after Target announced an exclusive deal that allows fans to download the first single of her new album, “Born This Way,” scheduled for release on May 23. Gaga fans were able to pre-order the new album beginning last Friday through Feb. 26 at www.Target.com/gaga. Target’s exclusive deluxe edition includes three additional studio songs and five remixes, and will be available at stores nationwide and on Target.com.

By Akhilesh Srivastava, [email protected]
According to NRF Retail Horizons Benchmark Report, two key initiatives to keep retailers competitive in 2010 were optimization and streamlining of their internal operations to reduce operating costs and improving their customer centricity to win the share of wallet.