News

Newport Beach, Calif. -- Engaged Capital, an investment firm specializing in small and mid-cap North American equities and beneficial owner of approximately 400,000 shares of the common stock of Abercrombie & Fitch Co. sent a letter to the company’s board of directors on Dec. 3. In its letter, Engaged Capital highlighted the upcoming expiration of Abercrombie chairman and CEO Michael Jeffries’ employment contract on February 1, 2014 as an opportunity for the board to set a new direction for the company.

Matthews, N.C. – Americans prefer to make most gift purchases in stores close to home. Seven-in-10 consumers in a recent survey conducted for Family Dollar say they describe themselves as in-person shoppers, while only 30% say they would be best characterized as online shoppers.

By Rodney Mason, CMO, Parago, [email protected]

In its annual survey of holiday spending trends, Deloitte reports that 46% of consumers plan to do their holiday shopping online. That puts online shopping in the number-one position for the first time in the survey’s history. Deloitte also found that nearly six out of 10 shoppers plan to use self-help technologies in-store when holiday shopping.

New York -- Cyber Monday online sales are up 17.5% over the same period last year as of 6 p.m. EST on Monday, according to IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark.

Mobile traffic accounted for 29.4% of all online traffic, up almost 62% compared to the same period last year.

In other findings from IBM:

Peter Freedman was appointed managing director of the Consumer Goods Forum with responsibility for leading the Paris-based organization’s efforts to promote better lives through better business.

U.S. shoppers made Cyber Monday the biggest online shopping day in history with a 20.6% increase in online sales, according to the latest cloud-based analytics findings from IBM. Mobile sales led the way, exceeding 17% of total online sales, an increase of 55.4% year-over-year.  

Cyber Monday also capped the highest five-day online sales period on record — from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday — which grew 16.5% over the same period in 2012.

Third party logistics provider Transplace named veteran finance executive Tony Cossentino as its new CFO reporting to CEO Tom Sanderson.

Cossentino replaces Steve Crowther, who joined Transplace in 2007 and helped guide the company through management-led private equity deals with CI Capital Partners and Greenbriar Equity Group, as well as strategic acquisitions of SCO Logistics, Torus Freight Systems and partnership with Celtic International.

Greek Yogurt leader Chobani hired 18-year Procter & Gamble finance executive Dipak Golechha to serve at its CFO reporting to founder and CEO Hamdi Ulukaya.

Golechha replaces former Chobani CFO James McConeghy who stepped down in November, the company said. His successor Golechha spent the past 18 years in finance roles at P&G including CFO of the company’s global snacks division.

ECRM compared retail circular advertising in Nov. 2012 versus Nov. 2013 and noted trends occurring across top retail chains. Last month, Toys “R” Us experienced a decrease of more than 65% on the page count and ads per circular metrics. For the month of Nov., however, the toy retailer completely reversed course with year-over-year increases in page count and ads per circular accompanied by a very minor decrease in ads per page.

There were more than 1 billion page views on Walmart.com from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, which the retailer said made for record sales.

Walmart said Cyber Monday 2013 was the biggest online sales day in its history and that the five-day period from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday was the highest five-day stretch in online sales to date, but stopped short of disclosing actual sales results.