Data & Analytics

Political feelings aside, the fact remains: When Hillary Rodham Clinton was nominated as our nation’s first official female presidential candidate, history was made. It sets a tone for all going forward — women can achieve anything they have the determination to pursue, regardless of the industry.   

eBay’s newest furniture destination looks like a page right out of Architectural Digest.  

As the loyalty landscape heats up, TJX Companies is renewing its existing program to remain competitive.   The off-price retailer announced a multi-year renewal of its partnership with Synchrony, a move that will continue to support financing for its five-year-old Rewards Credit Card program.   

More than 200 million Americans will shop online this year. Statistically, nearly 10 million of those shoppers will be visually impaired, more than 10 million will have a hearing impairment and more than four million of those will have severe limitations to their dexterity. For these shoppers, many goods and services offered online might be out of their reach.   

Everyone across retail industry is preparing for the holiday shopping season — especially the hackers.   Shoppers will continue to use more payment methods — from debit and credit to mobile wallets — during the hectic holiday shopping season, and hackers are standing at the ready. Whether infiltrating in-store peripherals, firewalls or databases, hackers are prepared to invade retail networks, disrupt systems and steal valuable information.   

First the good news: Retail sales rose 0.6% in September, after falling a revised 0.2% in August, according to figures by the Commerce Department.     The increase, the most in three months, was helped by a rebound of automobile and restaurant sales.    On the less positive front, excluding autos and gasoline, sales were up only 0.1%, less than economics predicted.    

Neil Saunders, CEO of Conlumino, a New York-based retail research agency and consulting firm, offers the following insights on September sales results.  

Sears Holdings announced that Jason Hollar has been promoted to CFO, effective immediately.     Hollar succeeds Robert A. Schriesheim, who the chain previously announced would be departing to focus on his other business interests and pursue other career opportunities.    Hollar, 43, joined Sears Holdings in October 2014 as senior VP, finance, overseeing the financial planning & analysis function, the business finance relationship with centralized finance, and procurement. 

An assessor processes your annually filed personal property tax return and assigns a value based on the cost of and age of your store fixtures. Is that assessment correct?    Increasingly the answer is “no” in a fast-changing retail environment in which online sales are turning in-store shelves into museum pieces. Online sales have increased 75.8%, to $341.7 billion, over the past five years alone. Statista forecasts that to double by 2020.  

It has been a long haul, but radio frequency identification (RFID) is finally making its bones in retail.   In 2014, 34% of retailers either implemented or were in the process of adding or piloting RFID. Fast-forward to 2016, and those results have doubled to 73%, according to the “Kurt Salmon RFID in Retail Study 2016.”