Business Analytics

San Francisco – Gap Inc. reported disappointing sales for April and the first quarter, hurt by fluctuations in foreign currency exchange and sliding sales at its namesake and Banana Republic divisions. Also, earlier timing of the Easter holiday, as compared to 2014, benefited the company’s March sales results and negatively impacted its April sales results.

Total same-store sales fell 12% in April, worse than predicted. Sales at Old Navy declined 6%, while sales at Banana Republic plunged 15%. Same-store sales for Gap fell 15%.

San Jose, Calif. – The shift of the Easter shopping season to March 2015 from April 2014 (Easter fell on April 5, 2015, the first day of fiscal April) had a substantial negative impact on year-over-year retail sales results. According to the RetailNext Retail Performance Pulse, sales dropped 12.5% compared to the same month a year earlier, while sales per shopper (SPS) actually increased 2.4%.

New York -- Commercial real estate services firm DTZ, which is backed by private-equity firm TPG, has entered into a deal to acquire rival Cushman & Wakefield Inc. for $2 billion.

The combined company will have 43,000 employees, annual revenues of more than $5.5 billion and manage more than 4 billion square feet of real estate globally.  It will operate under the Cushman & Wakefield name.

New York – Subscription retailers outpace e-commerce retailers and flash sale businesses by a long shot when it comes to a customer’s average numbers of orders in the span of a year. According to analysis of more than 10 million orders from 2.5 million unique customers by Retention Science, subscription retailers average 7.68 orders per customer in 12 months.

In contrast, e-commerce retailers only average 2.36 orders per customer in 12 months, and flash sale retailers only average 1.41 orders in that time span.

Asheville, N.C. – A significant increase in gain from the disposal of assets helped boost net income 37% at Ingles Markets Inc. in the second quarter of fiscal 2015 to $14.3 million, from $10.5 million in the same quarter a year earlier. Lower gasoline prices helped reduce net sales 3% to $915.3 million, from $947.76 million.

Excluding gasoline, same-store sales rose 1.2%.

Boston – With engaging the customer and managing the customer experience as top priorities for retailers, Boston Retail Partners’ 2015 CRM/Unified Commerce Survey indicates that 87% of retailers plan to use gamification to engage the customer within five years.

The theme of SAP’s annual Sapphire conference, in Orlando, Florida, was “Run Simple.” SAP focused on how its HANA business intelligence platform and growing number of HANA-powered applications can assist companies with the complicated task of creating simple enterprises that run on real-time data.

However, underneath the SAP-specific information was a lot of more general insight into how IT is disrupting the way businesses operate and engage their customers. Following are three insights with particular relevance for retailers.

Surging sales at Old Navy helped Gap Inc. offset sales declines at its namesake division and its Banana Republic stores in the first quarter.

Gap Inc. reported that for the first quarter of fiscal 2015, Gap Inc.’s net sales decreased 3% to $3.66 billion compared with $3.77 billion for the first quarter last year.

Brisbane, Calif. -- Bebe Stores Inc. reported a loss of $11.2 million in its third quarter, citing port delays and prolonged cold weather that also created pressure on sales.

Net sales for the quarter, ended April 30, increased 4.1% to $92.7 million, as compared to $89.0 million in the year-ago period. Same-store sales increased 1.2%.

Sprouts Farmers Market cited strong top-line sales growth as among the reasons for the retailer’s 4.8% comp increase for the first quarter.

Net sales for the first quarter ended March 29 were $857.5 million, a 19% increase compared to the same period in 2014. Net sales growth was driven by strong performance in new stores opened and a 4.8% increase in same store sales growth, the company said.