Management
June 21, 2019 at 11:45 am
Lululemon Athletica Inc. has quietly closed its men’s standalone stores in New York City and Toronto, even as it plans to more than double its men’s business in the next five years. The retailer found that guests respond better to Lululemon “as a dual-gender brand,” spokeswoman Erin Hankinson told Bloomberg News when asked about the locations. “We…
June 19, 2019 at 10:38 am
We noticed in the January/February 2019 Harvard Business Review there was a short article about “the limits of empathy.” Since we've been writing extensively over the last year about the importance of self-awareness and empathy, this caught our attention. The gist of the “argument” is that the idea of taking someone else’s perspective doesn’t necessarily…
June 17, 2019 at 1:38 pm
Target said a systemwide outage that prevented customers from making purchases at its stores on Saturday has been fixed. The two-hour outage, which affected its cash registers, was caused by an internal technology problem, the retail chain said, without giving further details. “After an initial but thorough review, we can confirm that this was not…
June 14, 2019 at 1:39 pm
Walmart announced Thursday that it's eliminating the president position at Jet.com and folding the e-commerce company's divisions into its own. The reorganization is part of an effort to merge the brands after Walmart bought Jet for $3.3 billion three years ago. Walmart current Jet President Simon Belsham will oversee the transition through August before his position is eliminated. Reportedly,…
June 10, 2019 at 2:30 pm
Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) announced today that its board of directors has formed a committee of independent directors to review a proposal from a group of HBC shareholders who would like to take the company private at $9.45 per share. The shareholders, who collectively own 57 percent of the company, include HBC Governor and Executive…
June 5, 2019 at 2:15 pm
Walmart has hired Scott Eckert to run its investment arm and startup incubator, Store No. 8, according to an internal memo from Marc Lore, the retailer's head of e-commerce on Monday, and obtained by Reuters. Eckert is a former executive of Bain Capital Ventures, where he evaluated potential new investments and advised CEOs about existing…
June 3, 2019 at 2:30 pm
Flower-delivery provider FTD Cos. filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Monday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, with plans to auction off its businesses while paying down debt. The company began restructuring and reviewing strategic alternatives last year. FTD warned in March that it could go out of business or shrink its operations this summer…
May 30, 2019 at 11:41 am
Sephora will be closing all of its stores in the U.S. for "inclusion workshops" on Wed., June 5. In a post on Sephora's Facebook page, the beauty retailer announced that on the morning of June 5, "every Sephora store, distribution center, and corporate office in the U.S. will close to host inclusion workshops for our…
May 24, 2019 at 11:36 am
In this week's Retail Right Now, Total Retail's Joe Keenan and Kristina Stidham discuss the recent moves by Kohl’s to diversify its business in response to challenges facing traditional brick-and-mortar retailers, particularly department stores. Within recent months, Kohl’s announced that it was exploring acquiring home decor retail chain At Home Group Inc., partnered with Fanatics to sell…
May 24, 2019 at 8:42 am
As “relevance” increasingly becomes the core competitive battleground for consumer brands, companies are being challenged to create products, services and experiences that meet customers’ individual needs at just the right moment. That’s changing the rules of the game, and overturning decades of conventional industry wisdom. The key change? The balance of power between brands and…
