Data & Analytics

Menomonee Falls, Wis. — Kohl’s on Thursday announced a series of organizational changes, including the promotion of Michelle Gass to the newly created principal officer position of chief merchandising and customer officer. Gass joined Kohl’s in 2013 as chief customer officer from Starbucks, where she is credited with playing a key role in the coffee giant’s turnaround  several years back.    

Austin, Texas — Whole Foods Market unveiled the name of its new banner of smaller, value-focused and millenial-targeted stores:  “365 by Whole Foods Market.”

E-commerce traffic increased 18% in the first quarter, according to the latest Shopping Index from Demandware.

The report measures digital commerce growth and identifies the trends driving that growth based on analysis of same site activity over time. The latest Demandware Shopping Index reveals that shopper attraction, which measures the number of shoppers, was up 18% in the first quarter of 2015 over the first quarter last year and drove 83% of the digital commerce growth.

Houston – Increased selling, general and administrative expenses (SG&A) led to net income at Francesca’s Holdings Corp. dropping 18% to $7.24 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2015 from $8.56 million the same period a year earlier.

Net sales fared better, rising 11% to $95.01 million from $85.42 million, helped by the opening of 76 new stores in the preceding 12 months.

Same-store sales declined 2% due to lower transaction count, although direct-to-consumer sales rose 19%.

Saks Off 5th helped its parent, Hudson’s Bay Co., increase same store sales in the first quarter, although the company did report a larger loss.

HBC reported that for the first quarter ended May 2, same store sales increased 2.7%. The company posted a loss of $44 million, compared with a profit of C$176 million, or 97 Canadian cents, a year earlier. Adjusted to exclude restructuring and other items, the loss was C$33 million, up from a comparable C$27 million loss a year earlier. Sales rose 11.7 percent to C$2.07 billion.

Jacksonville, Fla. - Regency Centers, a national owner, operator and developer of 321 grocery-anchored retail centers, needed a secure, dedicated platform that would integrate Symantec LiveOffice, Cisco Unity Connection and eMailSignature with its email solution. The company selected Intermedia Private Cloud to integrate and scale its business applications, thus enabling growth.

Minneapolis – Target Corp. is doubling the amount of its share buyback authorization from $5 billion to $10 billion. Under this authorization, through first quarter 2015, the company had invested a total of $3.7 billion to retire 56.9 million shares at an average price of $65.06 per share.

Los Angeles -- American Apparel announced it has appointed Brian McHale as senior VP and CIO, with responsibility for overseeing information technology and computer systems. In addition to providing critical support to American Apparel’s onsite hardware and software applications, McHale will also lead the development and expansion of the company’s retail digital capabilities alongside Thoryn Stephens, recently appointed chief digital officer.