News

It was a happy holiday in the home décor category and Kirkland’s is celebrating with the appointment of a new CEO and an elevated profit forecast.

Sales of an exclusive holiday cookbook will allow Dillard’s to donate more than $900,000 to of Ronald McDonald House Charities.   For the seventh year in a row, Dillard's offered for sale a special edition of the Southern Living Christmas Cookbook to benefit RMHC.   

Conn’s Inc. seemed to be putting their troubles behind them in the fourth quarter, as the company reported a modest increase in same store sales.   The company posted a 4.9% increase in same store sales for January (in January 2014, the company posted an increase of 28.2% mostly due to softer underwriting guidelines). Same store sales for the quarter increased 1.3% and they increased 8% for fiscal 2015.   

PetSmart’s nationally acclaimed initiative to help house the pets of homeless families is expanding.

PetSmart Promise, which helps temporarily homeless families keep all members of their family together -– including their four-legged family members -– is expanding into 16 PetSmart PetsHotel locations nationwide. PetSmart Promise is the result of a collaboration between PetSmart and Family Promise.

Boot Barn continued its march of success in the third quarter, which produced another round of positive financial results.

The company reported that for the third quarter ended Dec. 27, net sales increased 13.1% to $130.5 million; same store sales, which include e-commerce sales, increased 7.2%; and net income was $8.8 million, or $0.36 per diluted share, compared to a net income of $6.3 million or $0.33 per diluted share.

Cache on Wednesday said it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after running out of capital and time to complete its turnaround.

The women’s apparel retailer will continue to operate its business, but intends to continue to reduce its store count and sell and renegotiate some of its leases. Cache chairman and CEO Jay Margolis said the company filed Chapter 11 with the goal of “securing Cache’s future.”

Sally Beauty Holdings reported decreased profits for the first quarter, but the company’s just-named CEO says new marketing programs will be paying off soon.   Sally Beauty reported a profit of $54.9 million, or 35 cents a share, in its first fiscal quarter ended Dec. 31, compared with a profit of $58 million, or 35 cents a share last year. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters forecast a profit of 38 cents a share and sales increase of 3.7 percent to $975.1 million.  

The Emerging Trends in Retail conference will take place at a new data and time, but the big news is that Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., president and CEO Doug McMillon will headline the annual event put on by the Center for Retailing Excellence.  

The retail industry’s data security efforts were upgraded week when the Retail Industry Leaders Association named the former Texas chief information security officer to lead the trade group’s new intelligence sharing organization.

RILA said Brian Engle would serve as executive director of the Retail Cyber Intelligence Sharing Center (R-CISC) and be responsible for managing the organization’s daily affairs.

San Francisco -- Shopper traffic in January dropped 7% year-over-year as harsh winter storms amplified the shift of shopping to online and mobile, according to Euclid’s monthly retail benchmarks report which analyzes shopper activity and behavior during the month of January. In-store engagement improved more than expected during the low traffic, post-holiday month, but it is unclear how much the longer visits benefitted sales.