News

Shoe Carnival celebrates profit hike in Q2, plans new stores
Evansville, Ind. -- Shoe Carnival Inc. kicked up its heels about its profit in the second quarter, but missed on sales.

Aided by higher merchandise margins and lower advertising expenses, Shoe Carnival reported net earnings of $4.8 million, up 84% from $2.6 million a year earlier. Its results easily beat estimates.

Net sales rose 2% $227.8 million, less than expected, from $222.1 million. Same-store sales rose 0.5%.

Shoe Carnival plans to open 21 new stores and close 15 stores by the end of fiscal 2015.
NRF offers retailers help with new holiday planning playbook
Washington, D.C. -- Retailers will reveal their 2015 holiday strategies in the weeks ahead and as they do so the National Retail Federation is offering a powerful new resource filled with industry best practices to benchmark against for this year and beyond.

The newly released report, called the 2015 Holiday Planning Playbook, was compiled by top retailers over the course of the past year who served on various NRF councils focused on retail industry disciplines.

Millennials choose retailers for different reasons than elders

Los Angeles – Millennial consumers choose retailers based on different criteria than their elders. A survey of more than 13,000 e-commerce shoppers by Bizrate Insights found that millennials are by far the most price-sensitive with low pricing driving their choice of retailer.
7-Eleven gets even more convenient

Dallas – 7-Eleven Inc. bases its value proposition on being a convenient way of purchasing food and CPG staples. But for consumers who are too time-strapped to even make a quick visit to their nearest 7-Eleven store, the retailer is offering a new omnichannel delivery service.

7-Eleven and omnichannel delivery provider DoorDash are partnering to provide on-demand delivery from participating 7-Eleven stores in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, with delivery service following in Washington, D.C. and Boston in the coming months.
Another retailer joins the innovation lab ranks

Denver – Another company has joined the constantly expanding ranks of retailers who operate proprietary innovation labs.

Demonstrating that the appeal of innovation labs is moving beyond major chains, specialty online retailer eBags is teaming with Iterate Studio to jointly create a two-part innovation lab.
IHL: One vendor dominates hardgoods POS market

Franklin, Tenn. – Unlike the softgoods retail POS market where there are two leading vendors, one vendor clearly dominates the POS market for hardgoods retailers.

According to the new “POS Software of Hardgoods” study from IHL Group, Oracle is the clear market leader in the hardgoods market, with 39 of the top 200 accounts.
Amazon brings farm to table

Seattle – Amazon.com is piloting a program that delivers products from farmers markets to consumer tables (or at least their front doors).

Partnering with farmers market delivery service Fresh Nation LLC, Amazon is delivering individual orders of farmers market goods, as well as prepared gift baskets of fresh fruits and vegetables, to customers in Los Angeles and Orange and San Diego counties in Southern California.
K-VA-T stays in the money

Arlington, Va. – Regional southeastern grocery retailer K-VA-T Food Stores is staying in the money, and doing it remotely.

The operator of the Food City and Super Dollar banners has implemented vbInSight by Balance Innovations as its corporate reporting solution.

vbInSight is a Web-based corporate reporting application that provides K-VA-T with immediate access, via alerts, to individual and aggregate bookkeeper and cashier data.
Cool clothes in a high-tech store setting

New York -- Rebecca Minkoff has brought its “Store of the Future” concept to Los Angeles.
Gilt makes offline leap — but no walk-ins

New York -- Members of the flash sale site Gilt will soon be able to see close up some of the site’s designer deals on the popular website, complete with a personal stylist — but only if they book ahead.
H-E-B is Instacart’s newest partner

San Francisco -- Regional supermarket operator H-E-B has joined the ranks of retailers offering home delivery service.

The chain is the latest retailer to reach an agreement with grocery delivery service provider Instacart. Under the deal, Instagram will offer home delivery to H-E-B customers in the Austin and Houston markets.
Dollar Tree merger good for sales, but related costs hammer earnings

Chesapeake, Va. -- Dollar Tree swung to a loss in its second quarter on higher integration costs related to its acquisition of a formal rival. But its revenue skyrocketed as a result of the merger.

On July 6, Dollar Tree completed its $9 billion acquisition of Family Dollar Inc.