Data & Analytics

Store growth is the ultimate goal of most chain retailers. The more locations you have, the more revenues you (generally) bring in. But sometimes adding new stores creates its own new challenges.

When San Francisco-based Philz Coffee determined about four or five years ago that it wanted to start adding to its base of five coffee shops in the Bay Area, first with more stores in California and eventually hundreds of locations throughout the U.S,, the retailer knew its existing enterprise systems would not support that type of aggressive growth strategy.

Cincinnati – Macy’s will build a major direct-to-consumer fulfillment center near Owasso in Tulsa County, Okla., to support continued sales growth driven by Macy’s omni-channel strategy. The company is expected to invest more than $170 million in the facility, including the latest technology in material handling equipment and warehouse management systems.

Minneapolis – Target says that online traffic continues to grow at double-digit rates, with mobile sales growing more than 100% for the holiday period. Target.com experienced two of the strongest days of sales in its history on Thanksgiving Day and Cyber Monday.

In addition, Target was recently ranked as the most-browsed retailer on mobile over the past six months, according to a new report from Mobiquity.

Los Angeles – More than half (54%) of shoppers believe the best holiday discounts will be in December and 83% will continue to comparison shop for gifts throughout the month. PriceGrabber has released results from its December Winter Holiday Shopping Survey, of 3,299 U.S. online shopping consumers, that shows 87% of consumers will conduct most of their holiday shopping in December this year (compared to 78% in 2012).

Copperell, Texas – Alco Stores reported a growing net loss during the third quarter of fiscal 2014 compared to the same period in the prior year. Net loss totaled $16.4 million, compared to $1.4 million.

Results in the third quarter of fiscal 2014 included a non-cash charge of $9.8 million related to a valuation allowance on the company's cumulative deferred tax asset, and $1.1 million of non-recurring expenses attributable to merger activity.

Washington, D.C. -- Over 80% (84.2%) of retailers say their standard shipping deadline for guaranteed Christmas delivery will expire prior to Friday, Dec. 20, according to Shop.org’s eHoliday survey conducted by Prosper Insights & Analytics. Free standard shipping offers will follow suit, as nearly three-quarters (74.2%) of retailers who already have or will offer a free standard shipping promotion say their promotion will expire on or before Dec. 20. (Shop.org is a division of the National Retail Federation.)

Woonsocket, R.I. – CVS is basing its enterprise growth strategy on succeeding in the evolving pharmacy benefit management marketplace, capitalizing on the specialty pharmacy opportunity, driving retail growth through personalization, unlocking adherence through pharmacy excellence and expanding MinuteClinics.

Amsterdam, Netherlands – Staples Europe has launched new websites in both Germany and Netherlands. The sites offer a refreshed look and feel and many new features, such as personalized shopping with product recommendations based on customer preferences.

New features also include an updated search engine and filtering tools, easy reordering for frequently used products, quick checkout with a mini-cart that makes it easy to insert coupons, save addresses, and review orders, and a new store locator and ship-to-store functionality.

Cambridge, Mass. – Akamai is introducing enhancements to its Akamai Intelligent Platform web experience solution including EdgeStart, which uses Akamai’s globally-distributed network along with accelerated rendering in the browser to help deliver portions of web pages to users immediately and decrease load time. New protocol optimizations are intended to help overcome highly congested networks.

By John Cronin, Tiger Group, [email protected]