News

Five Last-Minute Holiday Tips for Online Merchants
By Christopher Birkholm As the official kick-off of the holiday season approaches, your core online holiday campaigns are all wrapped up and ready for holiday shoppers. This year, it is expected that online consumer spending will rise 16% over last year to approximately $60 billion, according to the comScore forecast. Desktop commerce is expected to jump nearly 14% while mobile commerce could see an increase of nearly 25%.
Wet Seal plunges into strategic review
Wet Seal has hired an investment banker and a senior adviser to analyze potential financial alternatives for the struggling retailer.

The company said it has hired investment bank Houlihan Lokey and former Tilly's Inc. executive William Langsdorf to aid in a strategic review. Wet Seal said it has not set a deadline for completion of the process and that “there can be no assurance that the exploration of the potential alternatives will result in a transaction.”

NYC Retail: Top 10 New Stores

It’s been another big year in terms of new store openings in New York City. Here are my top 10 faves:
Why Amazon Can't Be a Third Space ... Yet

When was the last time you heard someone say, without a trace of irony, that a big-box store helped them get through the day?

Twenty-five years ago, Ray Oldenburg published “The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Community Centers, Beauty Parlors, General Stores, Bars, Hangouts and How They Get You Through the Day.” Oldenburg, an urban sociologist, explained how certain stores were more than just places to shop.
Streamlining the DC

Optimized centers provide greater flexibility
Food Is in at Outlets

In the old days, outlet centers either didn’t offer food options or the pickings were pretty lean. In today’s iteration, however, food often takes center stage.

Villa Enterprises, a 50-year-old multi-brand restaurant operator of banners such as Villa Italian Kitchen, Mo’ Burger, South Philly Steak & Fries and Tinta Mexicana, has set the curve with its “Food Hall by Villa” in Simon’s Arizona Mills Shopping Center in Tempe. In a completely transformed, 13,262-sq.-ft. dining space with 14,280 sq. ft.
Food Lion selling canned wine

Wine with screw top lids was bad enough for purists, now retailers are filling their shelves with wine-based products package in cans.
Positive sign: Holiday desktop online spending up 11% in first 23 days of November

Reston, Va. - For the holiday season-to-date, $17.5 billion has been spent online using desktop computers, an 11% increase versus the corresponding days last year, according to comScore. Friday, November 21 has been the heaviest online spending day of the season to date at $914 million in desktop spending. Two other individual shopping days (Wednesday, Nov. 12 and Wednesday, Nov. 19) have also surpassed the $900 million threshold.
DSW tops Q3 expectations

Columbus, Ohio – DSW Inc. exceeded Wall Street expectations for net income and sales in the third quarter of fiscal 2014. Net income fell a less than expected 10% to $49.55 million from $54.96 million the same quarter a year earlier, with higher operating expenses and lower pretax income contributing to the decline. Sales totaled $670 million compared to $633 million and same-store sales rose 2.6%.
Macy’s to parade Facebook ads on Thanksgiving

When Macy's kicks off the holiday shopping season with its traditional parade on Thanksgiving Day, the retailer will also be deploying social media to complement its holiday push.

The company earlier this year was one of the first retailers to launch Facebook video ads. On Thursday evening, Macy’s will roll out its next round of video ads, this time to coincide with its Black Friday weekend campaign.