News

An inventory build at Lowe’s in preparation for the launch of a new HGTV Home brand of paint was cited as the source of strong sales growth by paint supplier Sherwin Williams.

Spring is a popular time for painting and home improvement retailers typically promote the category extensively. Lowe’s looks to be ready for the season with a new brand launching called HGTV Home by Sherwin Williams.

New York -- Teens directly command a whopping $75 billion of discretionary spending, but their wallets continue to shift from fashion and other “possession-based” categories to “shareworthy” experiences such as events and dining out. Those are among the findings of a study conducted by investment bank and asset management firm Piper Jaffrey.

Plug and Play brings together retailers and start-ups that offer specific technology and expertise that can relieve merchants’ pain points. Chain Store Age’s Customer Disruption newsletter provides a Q&A with the CEO of one of those companies in each issue. This time, the spotlight is on Arie Shpanya of Wiser.

What does your company do?

Portland, Ore. – Opt-in rates among consumers for push notifications from retail apps are on the decline. A new study from Urban Airship shows that average opt-in rates for retail apps fell to 37% in 2014, compared to 46% in 2013.

In 2014, retail apps doubled their notification send volume on the key shopping days of Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and consumer response rates also doubled, despite the majority of those notifications being general sales promotions sent to all users.

Boise, Idaho -- Merchants are not keeping pace with the growth of mobile when it comes to fraud and mobile payment adoption, according to a study by Kount, CardNotPresent.com and The Fraud Practice.

The third annual Mobilr Payments & Fraud Survey revealed that retailer awareness is not keeping pace with mobile fraud growth, and the support for the mobile channel is not meeting predictions and expectations as reported by respondents in previous years’ surveys.

Seattle – Nordstrom came out on top in a study that ranked the social media performance of department stores by digital marketing analytics company Rival IQ. The Rival Results Index (RRI) for High-end Department Stores scored 12 department stores based on their social media performance during first quarter 2015. Macy’s followed Nordstrom in the overall rankings, with Harrods (London), Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue and Bergdorf Goodman rounding out the top five.

Bonn, Germany – An estimated 50 billion devices will be connected to the Internet by 2020 compared to 15 billion today, according to a new trend report from DHL Inc. and Cisco.

Minneapolis – Target Corp. is reportedly nearing a $20 million settlement with MasterCard to cover costs related to the retailer’s 2013 data breach. According to the Wall Street Journal, the settlement would pay for the cost of reissuing payment cards and some fraud that resulted from improper use of consumer data.

Sources indicate Target and MasterCard have been negotiating for months. TJX paid a similar sum to MasterCard to settle costs from a 2008 data breach.
 

Commerce, Calif. - Smart & Final Stores Inc. is pricing an underwritten public offering of 10 million shares of its common stock at $18.50 per share. The shares are owned by certain stockholders of the company, including affiliates of Ares Management L.P.

Indianapolis – Lids Sports Group is upgrading to a new Oracle Retail POS solution that will simplify administration and the user experience for the more than 50 different POS screen and receipt configurations for the retailer’s partner brands. These include major college and pro teams, as well as the nearly 200 Locker Room-branded stores in Macy’s locations.