Store Systems

As other major retailers report sluggish sales, home improvement stores such as Home Depot Inc. are benefitting from rebounds in the housing market and the weather.

Houston – Specialty accessory retailer Charming Charlie is supporting international growth by moving its POS operations to the cloud. Charming Charlie has moved to a cloud strategy that leverages the POS engine in the cloud, but provides offline capabilities in the event the store loses cloud connectivity.

Seattle - Nordstrom Inc. is launching a text-based shopping service called TextStyle at all 116 U.S. stores. Customers can now make curated purchases from their salesperson or personal stylist using text messaging.

In 2014, the retailer launched Next, an opt-in, secure one-to-one service that lets Nordstrom customers communicate with their salesperson using their smartphone. TextStyle leverages the security, privacy and capabilities built into the Nordstrom Next texting service.

The Limited is finally following the lead of a slew of other retailers that have rolled out buy online, pick up in store services for customers.

Englewood, Colo. – Sports Authority Inc. is partnering with online protection plan provider Simplr to let customers protect new purchases. The product enables customers who purchase a protection plan to repair or replace a covered piece of sports equipment – such as treadmills, bikes, or golf clubs.  

There are no deductibles, repair costs, or hidden fees. Shoppers file a claim online. The three step claims process is straightforward and can be completed online any time, day or night:

1. Register the product online,

Columbus, Ohio - The Limited is launching a new program called Reserve Online, Ready In-Store, that allows customers to shop TheLimited.com and place items on hold for purchase and pick-up at their local store. Reserve Online, Ready In-Store is available at The Limited's nearly 225 full-line retail store locations across the U.S.

This full-scale launch follows a successful pilot in select stores in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio, markets.  

Lackluster traffic at its Golf Galaxy stores led Dick’s Sporting Goods to report a lackluster profit in the first quarter.

Minneapolis – Target Corp. plans to roll out RFID-enabled “smart labels” later this year to aid inventory accuracy and improve in-store stock levels. In a corporate blog post, Keri Jones, executive VP, global supply chain and operations of Target, said the retailer is working with “key vendors” on a “fast paced timeline” to deploy RFID.