Store Systems

Gordmans Stores plans to open a new store next month in its hometown of Omaha in April, the first of five new units apparel and home décor retailer has planned for the year.

The pace of expansion slowed at Shoe Carnival in 2015 but the company produced respectable growth against a challenging prior year comparison that has it poised to achieve a major milestone in 2016.

Ross Dress for Less opened a new store in O’Fallon, Missouri on March 5.

The 25,000-sq.-ft. store is located at the O’Fallon Walk Shopping Center, 30 miles west of downtown St. Louis along Interstate 70 between Lake St. Louis and St. Peters, on the southwest corner of Highway K and Feise Road.

The opening is part of the retailer’s 2016 expansion program, totaling about 70 new locations during the year.

Destination XL Group is seeing strong same store sales growth from its stores branded as DXL as it continues to shift away from the smaller footprint Casual Male concept.

Destination XL Group, which bills itself as the largest omnichannel specialty retailer of big and tall men's apparel, said its total same store sales increased 3.1%, but its 137 DXL stores open for more than 13 months grew comps 8.9%.

New store expansion and expectations for same-store sales growth are in store for Michaels Companies in 2016, according to CEO Chuck Rubin.

Rubin sounded an optimistic tone about Michaels’ future following the release of fourth quarter results he characterized as “strong” and attributed to an improved shopping experience, increased customer communications and trend right holiday assortments.

More powerful than a smartphone and more portable than a laptop, tablet computers offer retail design and construction professionals some unique opportunities.

In a session at Chain Store Age’s SPECS 2016 conference at Hilton Anatole in Dallas, March 13-15, “Tablets Unlocked,” Bart Waldeck, CMO and senior VP of product strategy for Tango, identified the top five opportunities tablets offer the store development process.

Converse found a perfect fit when it looked to renovate its 15,500-sq.-ft. flagship in Manhattan.

It was imperative that the store have as little downtime as possible, and Schimenti Construction delivered a solution tailor made for the iconic sneaker retailer. After only one month of shutdown, the flagship reopened in its landmark building in SoHo.

Target Corp. is expanding the management of its technology organization with two new executive hires.

Tom Kadlec will join Target as senior VP of infrastructure and operations. He will be tasked with leading efforts to modernize and enhance Target’s technology foundation. The company also announced the hiring of Joel Crabb as VP of architecture, with responsibility for enterprise architecture, agile practices and Application Program Interfaces (APIs).