Data & Analytics

Sears and Amazon.com both recently came under fire for allowing rings decorated with the Nazi swastika symbol to be posted for sale on their third-party seller sites. While both retailers quickly pulled the items down and issued public apologies, they received a large amount of negative publicity and surely damaged their brand image with many offended customers, perhaps to the point of permanently losing some of them.

Cleveland, Ohio –- The Sherwin-Williams Company had a strong third quarter of fiscal 2014, with net income growing 24% to $326.24 million from $262.97 million in the same period a year earlier. Net sales climbed 10% to $3.15 billion from $2.85 billion.  

Beijing, China –- Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Apple Inc. are reportedly considering partnering on digital payment. According to the Wall street Journal, Alibaba executive chairman Jack Ma and Apple CEO Tim Cook have both made separate public statements about partnering, with Ma more specifically citing digital payment, and plan to meet on the matter.  

Carle Place, N.Y. –- 1-800-Flowers.com reported a net loss of $4.58 million for the first quarter of fiscal 2015, a slight improvement from the $4.64 million net loss reported in the same quarter a year earlier. Expenses drove the company’s net loss.  

Minneapolis –- An increase in selling, general & administrative (SG&A) expenses helped reduce net income at Tile Shop Holdings Inc. to $1.5 million, down 63% from $4.05 million in the same quarter the prior fiscal year. In addition, founder and CEO Robert Rucker will retire as CEO effective Jan. 1, 2015 and be replaced by current COO Chris Homeister, who will join the board of directors early in 2015.  

Plug and Play brings together retailers and start-ups who offer specific technology and expertise that can relieve merchants’ pain points. Customer Disruption highlights one of those start-ups in each issue with a brief Q&A. This issue, the spotlight is on Polina Marchenko, CEO of KptnCook.   What does KptnCook do?  

Austin, Texas -- The platform behind today’s most inspiring shopping experiences today announced the results of a recent study based on an audit of 220 websites across 10 retail segments to identify benchmarks for how online shoppers are able to navigate in the digital realm. The study compared those results to existing attribute categories of current Edgecase retailers in the same categories to show the current disconnects in navigation standards.   

New York –- Organizational efficiency costs and charges related to store closures and upgrades that are part of an ongoing transformation plan negatively impacted net income reported by Coach Inc. during the third quarter of fiscal 2014. Net income totaled $146 million, down 33% from $218 million in the same quarter the previous fiscal year.