News

Men’s Wearhouse to open 300 tuxedo shops in Macy’s
Fremont, Calif. — Men's Wearhouse on Thursday announced it had signed a 10-year agreement with Macy's to operate men's tuxedo rental shops inside 300 Macy’s locations. The shops are expected to be located in or near the men’s department.

Men's Wearhouse will begin operating 17 pilot tuxedo shops in fall 2015, and expects the remaining shops to be open by fall 2016. Macy's and Men's Wearhouse will also collaborate to develop a digital tuxedo rental shop on macys.com.
JDA to launch cloud-based solutions on Google Cloud Platform
Scottsdale, Ariz. – JDA Software Group will release its next generation of cloud-based omnichannel and supply chain solutions on the public Google Cloud Platform. Through this collaboration, Google will provide a scalable and flexible technology platform via the cloud to support JDA’s future application development and delivery.

Survey: E-commerce growth is accelerating

E-commerce traffic increased 18% in the first quarter, according to the latest Shopping Index from Demandware.

The report measures digital commerce growth and identifies the trends driving that growth based on analysis of same site activity over time. The latest Demandware Shopping Index reveals that shopper attraction, which measures the number of shoppers, was up 18% in the first quarter of 2015 over the first quarter last year and drove 83% of the digital commerce growth.
U.K. self-serve coffee retailer leverages Watson Analytics

London, U.K. — Honest Cafe, an automated coffee house chain in London, is using IBM Watson Analytics to unearth client insights to help determine everything from coffee products and pricing, to marketing and promotions. Honest Cafe is a new venture from Revive Vending where three cafes currently in operation, and four more planned, are all unmanned.
J.Crew fires head designer, trims staff

Troubled specialty retailer J.Crew Group Inc. says it has laid off 175 staff members and fired its chief women’s designer.

The company says the changes and business improvement initiatives will "better align with the current and future retail environment."
Five tips for retailers to personalize interaction with customers

By Joe Dalton As technologies advance, social channels proliferate, and consumers become more plugged into digital marketing, personalization and contextualization is becoming the key to connecting with customers. While consumers build their online identities simply by using their devices for everything from browsing to averting traffic, they leave trails of their preferences, behavior, and values that retailers can draw upon to appeal to the interests of each individual customer.
American Apparel has a new CIO

American Apparel announced it has appointed Brian McHale as senior VP and CIO, with responsibility for overseeing information technology and computer systems.
Survey: e-commerce growth up 18% in first quarter

New York — Online traffic rose 18% in the first quarter, according to Demandware's latest Shopping Index. The study also reveals that the duration of mobile shopping visits decreased 43% in the first quarter, down to 8.4 minutes. Overall shopping episodes were also down 31% to 8.9 minutes.
Lululemon opens way for founder Chip Wilson to sell stake New York

New York — Chip Wilson, the controversial founder of Lululemon Athletic Inc., may well be on the verge of selling his stake in the company, according to numerous reports. Lululemon, based in Vancouver, British Columbia, filed a 20.1 million share offering with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, allowing Wilson and his wife to exit their roughly 14% stake. The couple's stake in the company was worth about $1.34 billion, Reuters reported.
Restoration Hardware builds more momentum

Restoration Hardware earnings surged in the first quarter on strong sales, giving a boost to the company as it embarks on expanding its business with new stores with larger showrooms.

For the first quarter ended May 2, Restoration Hardware reported a profit of $7.2 million, or 17 cents a share, up from $1.8 million, or four cents a share, a year earlier. Excluding tax impacts, a prior-year litigation claim and other items, per-share earnings rose to 23 cents from 18 cents. Revenue increased 15% to $422.4 million.