News

For millennials it’s little more than legend, but the dotcom crash of the early 2000s was a very real event for any retail IT professionals of the Gen X or Baby Boomer demographics.

As retailers prepare to kick off the technology conference/user group season with the upcoming NRF “Big Show,” it might be a good idea to review a few lessons from that era about how to properly evaluate vendors and solutions.

A Shaky Investment

Walgreens and Advocate Health Care on Monday announced Advocate will own and operate the 56 Healthcare Clinics at Walgreens stores across the greater Chicagoland area. The retail clinics will function as part of Advocate and will be branded as Advocate Clinic at Walgreens, with the first clinic opening under the Advocate banner in May 2016.

American Apparel on Monday said that it has received unanimous approval of all voting classes for its reorganization plan. But also on Monday, the company received a $300 million buyout offer from an investor group that has the support of American Apparel founder and ousted CEO, the controversial Dov Charney.

The investor group, which is comprised of Hagen Capital Group and Silver Creek Capital Partners, said that its offer is superior to the company's reorganization plan, and has a valuation range of $180 million to $270 million.

A decades-old apparel retailer finds itself no longer in fashion, undone by fast-fashion competition and a lack of e-commerce expertise.

Joyce Leslie filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy court protection in White Plains, New York, and is a likely candidate for liquidation, Women’s Wear Daily reported. The chain, founded in 1945, operates 47 stores throughout the Northeast.

Ollie’s Bargain Outlet is raising its full year outlook after the discount retailer holiday strategy delievered strong sales growth.

The company annouced that net sales over the holidays increased 23%, while same store sales increased 5.6%.

BCBG Max Azria Group LLC, a vertical specialty women’s apparel retailer that operates an e-commerce site and store-within-a-store locations, is working to eliminate channel silos.

BCBG has selected cloud-based Aptos solutions to integrate its in-store and digital commerce operations, supporting a seamless omnichannel customer experience. The retailer was looking to transform aging legacy systems, integrate sales channels, and elevate in-store customer experience, while gaining 360-degree visibility of customers, inventory and transactions across all channels.

Oracle is introducing Oracle Retail 15, an enterprise retail suite that includes diverse features such as new cloud-based applications and POS hardware solutions.

In the cloud area, Oracle is adding four new retail-specific services.

• Using Oracle Retail Sales and Productivity Cloud Service, retailers can gain real-time insights into comparative sales, salesperson productivity, merchandise productivity, store sales, and store traffic.

The winners in today’s retail food retail sector will be those who can continually stay ahead of competitors by retaining current customers and attracting new ones.

However, many of the tools of yesterday are likely stale and ineffective today. Trending indicates that older, traditional practices of discount/promotional pricing, printed signs/stickers, and aisle video display monitors to attract customers and increase sales are becoming outmoded and have lost their effectiveness in many food retail environments.