News

Analysis: Five Steps to Data Breach Prevention
When was the last time you were witness to a shopper paying for a purchase with actual cash? In today’s retail market, the majority of shoppers are leveraging credit and debit cards for their purchases – the more progressive group has even started using mobile wallet options. Although the mobile payment adoption rate is increasing, industry experts realize that with convenience comes the burgeoning of security risks such as data breaches.
Is Best Buy headed for its best Christmas ever?
Best Buy shared an optimistic view of the holiday season after posting a 3.2% third quarter comp increase at U.S. stores, but offered plenty of reasons why profitability could prove challenging.

Survey – Cross-border shoppers double spend of domestic shoppers

San Jose, Calif. - Cross-border shoppers (those for whom more than 10% of their online spend is cross-border), spend approximately twice as much as consumers who only shop domestically. New research from PayPal and Ipsos, which investigated the online and cross-border shopping habits of more than 17,500 consumers in 22 countries, shows 30% of U.S. online consumers shop across borders.
Burberry executive to be Children’s Place CFO

The Children's Place has announced the appointment of Anurup Pruthi as senior vice president and chief financial officer effective Dec. 1.
Children’s Place names Reliance Industries vet CFO: Q3 net income drops

Secaucus, N.J. – The Children’s Place Inc. has named Anurup Pruthi as senior VP and CFO, effective Dec. 1, 2014. He will report to Michael Scarpa, COO.
Life after the Rainbow Loom at Michaels

As the popularity of the Rainbow Loom waned this year so did sales at Michaels where third quarter comps declined 0.8% compared to the prior year.
Amazon starts Black Friday deals Nov. 21

Seattle – Amazon.com will start offering Black Friday deals on Friday, Nov. 21, and adding new deals as often as every 10 minutes for eight straight days. Amazon will introduce three Deals of the Day starting on Thanksgiving at midnight, as well as three more on Black Friday, in addition to thousands of limited-time Lightning Deals.
Study: Mass retailers more popular than e-tailers for holiday

Denver – An estimated 28% of consumers plan to do most of their holiday shopping at mass retailers, compared to 26% who will frequent online retailers. According to an ongoing shopper behavior study conducted by The Integer Group and M/A/R/C Research, free shipping continues to be the most popular offer for holiday shoppers, with 58% of shoppers reporting they expect to take advantage of it this holiday season.
Dollar Tree Q3 sales lift holiday outlook

As Dollar Tree moves forward with its acquisition of Family Dollar, the company reported an increase in same-store sales and expressed a favorable holiday outlook.

Dollar Tree's earnings per share increased 19% to $0.69 and its revenue increased 11.2% to $2.1 billion compared to the third quarter of fiscal 2013; these results were driven by comparable-store sales increasing 5.9% during the quarter compared to an increase of 3.1% in the prior-year period.
CIT: Middle-market retail execs cautiously optimistic about holidays

NEW YORK - Senior middle-market retail executives are cautiously optimistic about the upcoming holiday season. Fifty-five percent of executives anticipate their total holiday sales will increase by 6% or more in 2014, as compared to only a third last year, according to an annual study conducted by CIT Group.