News

New York City-based RCS Real Estate Advisors has announced a bid deadline of June 16, 2016 for the remaining available leases of retailer Hancock Fabrics.
 
RCS began the process of selling the retailer's leases following Hancock Fabrics' February bankruptcy announcement. Hancock Fabrics operated 250 retail stores in 37 states when it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Feb. 2, 2016. Spence Mehl, senior VP of RCS, made the announcement.
 

Consumers are being choosy about where they are spending extra money that is becoming available with the end of the recession.
 
According to a new study from Mintel, more than two in five (44%) Americans describe their financial situations as "healthy" in 2016, compared to 37% in 2015 and 33% in 2013, indicating that improvements in the economy are being felt at a household level. However, different retail categories are receiving the benefit more than others.
 

Stirling Properties and CBL & Associates Properties, Inc. are announcing several changes to Ambassador Town Center in Lafayette, Louisiana.
 
Half Shell Oyster House will occupy 5,850-sq.-ft. of restaurant space, and is the newest addition to the eatery line-up. This will mark the ninth location for the seafood restaurant, and the first in Louisiana. Half Shell Oyster House is expected to open in November 2016.
 
Newly leased, Just 4 Him Men’s Haircut Lounge will occupy 1,267-sq.-ft. and is expected to open in September 2016.

Houston-based Baker Katz has redeveloped and fully leased a retail site in Beaumont, Texas.
 
Baker Katz principal Kenneth Katz made the announcement.
 
Baker Katz completely redeveloped the site, beginning with demolishing the previous building with an end plan to create five new spaces for retail tenants. Starbucks, Mattress One and Wingstop will occupy the 6,100-sq.-ft. building. T-Mobile and Access Dental will each have 2,800-sq.-ft. in the second building. There is a new H-E-B located immediately east of the property.
 

Walgreens Boots Alliance is making a number of changes to its senior management roles and responsibilities as part of what the company is calling the “next phase of evolution.”
 
Alex Gourlay, executive VP of Walgreens Boots Alliance and president of Walgreens, and Ornella Barra, executive VP of Walgreens Boots Alliance and president and chief executive of global wholesale and international retail, have been appointed to the role of co-CEOs.
 

Literally hundreds of considerations go into designing an app, but the success of your app hinges largely on one factor: user experience (UX).

So what is UX exactly? It’s less about what an app does and more about how it feels. You don’t just use apps, you engage with them. The instant a user opens an app for the first time, they form a connection with it. Their initial impression draws upon physical and emotional cues, and is largely influenced by UX.

Merchant Commerce Exchange (MCX), the retailer consortium that formed to create a rival mobile payment service to Apple Pay, is pulling the plug on pilot tests of its CurrentC app. MCX also announced layoffs in May 2016 and despite public claims to the contrary, appears to be shelving CurrentC permanently.

According to Jason Del Rey of Re/Code, this outcome was never in doubt.
 

A veteran creative executive is coming back to Under Armour in a new role, following a short hiatus.
 
Dave Dombrow, former Under Armour senior VP, creative footwear and accessories, will return to the brand as chief design officer, beginning Aug. 1, 2016. In his newly created role as chief design officer, Dombrow will guide the design of Under Armour's entire collection of footwear, apparel and accessories.

Amazon.com has been announcing a lot of new distribution centers lately, and now is opening a new IT office dedicated to logistics, as well as a new physical pick-up location.

The e-tail giant is planning a new technology development center in downtown Minneapolis that will create 100 full-time, technology-focused jobs. Amazon currently has hundreds of employees in Minnesota and is also in the process of hiring an additional 1,000 full-time employees for its new Shakopee, Minnesota, fulfillment center.

When it comes to supporting the back end of omnichannel retailing, the Bon-Ton Stores Inc. digs deeper than supply chain.

Bon-Ton has selected the end-user experience monitoring (EUM) solution from Catchpoint Systems, a digital performance analytics company, to help optimize the company’s digital customer experience. Specifically, the retailer will use Catchpoint’s Synthetic (Active) Monitoring solution to ensure that its e-commerce website and mobile site deliver consistently high performance, and to find and fix issues before they impact consumers.