Data & Analytics

Ascena Retail Group, parent company of Lane Bryant, Dressbarn and Justice, may have just reported same store sales growth across all its formats and achieved Thanksgiving weekend sales objectives, but president and CEO David Jaffe remains cautious in his outlook for the remainder of the holiday season.

As so many other retailers have noted in recent weeks, Jaffe said this year’s highly competitive, promotional and compressed holiday season makes it difficult to know how the next few weeks will play out, despite the company’s recent performance.

Same store sales increased 10.1% during November at J.C. Penney, the company announced during an update on its holiday performance.

In addition to the double digit comp performance, J.C. Penney said its e-commerce sales through jcp.com continued to be strong, running well ahead of last year, consistent with last month's trend.

U.S. shoppers made Cyber Monday the biggest online shopping day in history with a 20.6% increase in online sales, according to the latest cloud-based analytics findings from IBM. Mobile sales led the way, exceeding 17% of total online sales, an increase of 55.4% year-over-year.  

Cyber Monday also capped the highest five-day online sales period on record — from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday — which grew 16.5% over the same period in 2012.

Leading global beauty company Coty has appointed Patrice de Talhouët as CFO. He will replace Sergio Pedreiro who will stay on at Coty through March 2014 to provide a seamless transition for de Talhouët, as well as to complete Coty's fiscal 2014 second quarter earnings release.

The holiday season has officially kicked off and Clorox is anticipating the messes that will need cleaning. The brand is teaming up with actress Busy Philipps for the third annual Bleach It Away sweepstakes.

Philipps and the Messy Melodies, Clorox's own band of comedic holiday carolers, will hit the streets of New York City to bring holiday “bleachable moments” to life through song.

CommonKindness president and co-founder Sarah Schloemer has been named the winner of a Silver Stevie Award in the Young Entrepreneur of the Year category in the 10th annual Stevie Awards for Women in Business.

The Stevie Awards for Women in Business are the world’s top honors for female entrepreneurs, executives, employees and the organizations they run. All individuals and organizations worldwide are eligible to submit nominations: public and private, for-profit and nonprofit, large and small. The 2013 awards received entries from 18 nations and territories.

Tablets, headphones and gaming hardware were the most frequently purchased consumer electronics products during a weekend which saw more than half of CE sales occur online.

The Consumer Electronics Association said 55% of U.S. adults who bought consumer electronics on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday did so online, well ahead of the 45% who did so in 2012.

Regional department store operator Gordmans Stores said its fourth quarter same store sales are likely to decline in the mid-single digits after it reported a 6.1% drop in comps for the third quarter ended November 2.

Despite the comp decline, Gordman’s total sales at its 93 stores increased 5.8% to $151.3 million from $143.1 million due to the addition of 10 new stores in the prior nine months. Net income for the third quarter was $1.1 million, or six cents a share, compared to net income of $4 million, or 21 cents a share, last year.