News

There is good news for retailers in a just-released survey on Halloween spending.   Americans will splurge on costumes, candy and pumpkins for a record $9.1 billion in Halloween spending this year, according to the annual survey released by the National Retail Federation and Prosper Insights & Analytics. That's up 8.3% from last year’s previous record of $8.4 billion.  

Visual content has made H&M, Topshop/Topman Forever21 the most successful social media brands in the competitive fast-fashion industry.   This was according to data from visual content performance platform ShareIQ. The analysis digs into the data for the first three quarters of 2017 among the top brands in the fast-fashion category in the United States: H&M, Forever21, Uniqlo, Gap, Old Navy, Topshop/Topman, Zara, Mango and American Apparel.  

Overall positive economic conditions will propel retail sales online as well as of offline this coming holiday season.   That's according to a report by Forrester, which predicts that U.S. online holiday sales will grow 12% to reach $129 billion in 2017, compared to $115 billion last year. Offline holiday sales will inch up 0.3%, to reach $549 billion in 2017.  

Tiffany & Co. has named Roger Farah as chairman, effective Oct. 2.    Farah, 64, joined Tiffany’s board in March 2017. He succeeds Michael J. Kowalski, who has served as chairman since 2002.   Kowalski, who served as CEO of Tiffany from 1999 until his retirement in March 2015, has been acting as interim CEO since February 2017. He will relinquish that title when the company’s newly appointed CEO, Alessandro Bogliolo, takes the reins in October.  

Amazon is about to put down some new roots in New York City — and is hunting for new employees to support the operation.  

To work in retail is to accept the inevitability of déjà vu. But what returns is often never quite the same, as can be seen in the current struggle by many shopping malls to generate enough traffic to remain viable. Let me take you back to the days of my initiation to retail in New Orleans (site of next week’s National Retail Tenants Association conference), when malls began rising in former fields and woodlands and store owners in all regions struggled to manage the change.  

An uptick in consumer spending could drive sales as high as $1.05 trillion this holiday season.   Retail holiday sales should rise a healthy 4% to 4.5% over last year's shopping season — a factor that could drive sales between $1.04 trillion and $1.05 trillion between November 2017 and January 2018, according to the annual retail holiday sales forecast from the firm’s retail and distribution practices. (Holiday sales are seasonally adjusted, and exclude motor vehicles and gasoline.)  

A combination of restructuring costs, Hurricane Harvey and a new accounting standard took its toll of Bed Bath & Beyond’s second quarter results.   For the quarter ended Aug. 26, the home goods retailer reported net sales of about $2.9 billion, a decrease of about 1.7% from the same time last year. Comparable sales also decreased by approximately 2.6%, surpassing analysts’ expectations of a 0.7% decrease.  

Walmart is bucking the holiday hiring trend again this year.    Unlike other competitors that are hiring thousands of temporary workers to service shoppers during the holiday season, the discount giant plans to offer extra hours to its current associates. These shifts will staff traditional roles like cashier and stocker, and newly created technology-empowered positions, such as personal shoppers and Pickup associates, according to Walmart.  

American Eagle Outfitters is entering an emerging global retail market.   The teen retailer is preparing for its debut in India. American Eagle’s expansion will be supported through a multi-year license agreement with the Aditya Birla Group. The Indian conglomerate has an extensive retail portfolio, as well as strong digital and omnichannel capabilities.    The first stores are expected to open in Mumbai and Delhi in Spring 2018.