News

Destination Maternity Corp. has turned down an offer from a French company that disclosed a 13.1% stake in the U.S. company, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Monday.

The nation’s largest retailer of maternity apparel rejected an offer from children’s clothing company Orchestra-Premaman, which manufactures clothing for children and infants, saying the request for talks regarding a potential acquisition were not in the best interests of Destination Maternity shareholders.

We all know the stress of seasonal shopping can make the holidays anything but merry for consumers.

However, there are a few key customer experience features retailers can offer to help make this time of year bearable, if not downright happy, for beleaguered shoppers. The holiday customer experience should be:

App-centric

According to the Associated Press, the company announced on Friday that it will sell itself to Bridgestone for $863 million, a $28 million increase over the previous deal. The two companies announced they would merge in October for a price of $15 per share. Then, Carl Icahn stepped in last week, offering $15.50 per share. [Nashville Business Journal]

The CEO of 99 Cents Only pointed to the promise of a new executive team as evidence that the company can return to profitable growth even as it reported disappointing third quarter results.

The company said for the period ended Oct. 30, the company's net sales increased 2.8% to $491.5 million, compared to $478.3 million in the prior year. Same-store sales decreased 3.9% due to challenges in produce and consumables sales, the cannibalization impact of recent new store openings as well as ongoing initiatives to clear excess seasonal inventory, the company said.

Despite the mixed outlook for holiday sales, the private equity community remains interested in retail, believing that the sector can offer the opportunity to achieve scalable growth.

Digital marketing is a discipline that is rapidly evolving; that’s because the Web itself is changing faster than ever. We’re nearing the realization of Web 3.0 – The Semantic/Intelligent Web – thanks to the mountains of data pouring out of new devices, products, and social platforms every second of every day.

As a result, marketers need to understand how this deluge of data impacts content & community marketing strategies.

Only one retailer has averaged online deliveries in one day so far this holiday season.

According to a Kurt Salmon study of online orders from 62 retailers across a broad range of categories, including brick-and-mortar and online-only retailers, Zappos kicked delivery into a higher gear than any other analyzed retailer with an average of delivery in one day.

It’s no secret Amazon.com counts Google and Apple as two of its biggest competitors for general online domination. According to Motley Fool, Amazon is expanding a specific benefit of its Prime paid loyalty service intended to both boost membership and stay current with Google and Apple’s consumer offerings. [Motley Fool]

Before you declare your personalized marketing efforts a success, check with your customers.

That is the overriding message from a global study of 1,200 consumers and 200 marketing professionals conducted in October 2015 by Forrester Consulting for hybris. The study, “The Contextual Marketing Imperative,” finds that while 66% of marketers rate their efforts at personalization as “very good” or “excellent,” just 31% of consumers report companies are consistently delivering personalized, cross-channel experiences

Specialty outdoor retailer The North Face is engaging its nature-oriented online customers in a very down-to-earth way.

The North Face is launching a new interactive online shopping experience. Using the IBM Watson artificial intelligence platform and Fluid XPS intuitive recommendation engine, customers can now use natural conversation as they shop online to receive personalized outerwear recommendations.