News

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.

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.
Survey: Half of credit card holders don’t care about rewards

New York — If credit card issuers stopped offering rewards, a slight majority of American credit cardholders wouldn’t change their spending habits. According to a new Bankrate.com survey, 51% of U.S. credit card holders say they would keep using the card the same way they did previously. Another 26% would use the card less often and 19% would stop using it entirely.
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."
Hudson’s Bay swings to Q1 loss, will open 12-15 stores in 2015

Toronto, Canada – Hudson’s Bay Co. Inc. (HBC) swung a net loss of $54 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2015 from net earnings of $176 million in the year-ago period amid higher selling, general and administrative (SG&A) expenses even as as sales showed strong improvement.
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.
Lululemon strikes profitable pose in Q1

Vancouver – Lululemon Athletica Inc. struck a pose of profitability in the first quarter of fiscal 2015. Net income more than doubled to $47.8 million from $19 million a year earlier, aided by the elimination of a tax expense.

Net revenue increased 10% to $423.5 million, from $384.6 million. A 27% hike in direct-to-consumer net revenue, which now represents 20% of total company revenue, helped drive the overall improvement. Same-store sales dropped 1%.
Torrid looking for next big model

Plus-size apparel retailer Torrid is launching a national quest to discover the new full-figured face for the brand.

Casting for the Face of Torrid 2016 kicked off this month at Torrid.com/modelsearch and will be followed this summer with live casting events in five major Torrid markets: Minneapolis, Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia and Los Angeles.
Bloomingdale’s CEO Talks Retail: 10 Take-Aways

New York -- Bloomingdale’s chairman and CEO Tony Spring talked about one of the company’s top-selling products (frozen yogurt!) and much more on Tuesday at the Retail Marketing Society’s “Reinventing the Store” conference in New York.

Here are 10 take-away quotes from his presentation:

“Our Forty Carrots frozen yogurt is one of our best-selling items. We have customers who come into our store five times a week for it.”