Merchandising

For retailers that sell home repair items and emergency supplies, a storm like Hurricane Sandy represents a logistical puzzle and a big sales opportunity. Few retailers have in place plans as firm as these retailers do for when a storm hits. Like its competitors - Wal-Mart and Lowe's - Home Depot's corporate eye was squarely on Hurricane Sandy a week ago, when the company's supply-chain managers and merchants began preparing for the advancing storm by moving high-demand goods

Macy's is hoping to entice the coveted 13- to 30-year-old market with the launch of its millenial initiative. The initiative involves the rollout or expansion of more than 20 brands for its Macy's mstylelab (primarily serving customers ages 13 to 22) and Impulse (primarily serving customers ages 19 to 30) departments. According to Macy's, the millenial generation, which is the largest and most diverse in America, is expected to spend an estimated $65 billion this year.

Move over, Navajo panties. Urban Outfitters has been supplanted as the retailer most hated by Native Americans. Gap started selling a "Manifest Destiny" T-shirt recently, but the retailer removed the shirt from its stores after a flood of complaints organized by members of the Native American community. Critics left angry Facebook messages, sent tweets and posted negative reviews of the shirt on Gap's website. 

Luxury purveyor Neiman Marcus has unveiled its annual holiday catalog chock-full of gifts from the relatively affordable to the enormously expensive (and goofy). Among the highlights — a posh henhouse, inspired by France's Versailles Palace, for the world's most pampered chickens. Priced at $100,000 (delivery not included), the deal includes a library full of books, an "elegant" chandelier and a custom-built garden. "You've always fancied yourself a farmer — now thanks to Heritage Hen Farm, you're doing it in the fanciest way possible," says the catalog.

The scariest part of Halloween shopping isn't the pop-up stores full of movie tie-ins and slutty tollbooth collector costumes dotting the nation's half-dead shopping centers, but the tombstones of retailers past hidden by their temporary tarp banners. Halloween is about as good a time as any to take U.S. retail's preholiday temperature. For some unfortunate retailers, the result comes back as cold as a corpse. Even as the National Association of Realtors predicts retail vacancy rates will improve from 12 percent to 11 percent this year, some stores just aren't cutting it.

Toys"R"Us has launched a new digital entertainment service, Toys"R"Us Movies, which provides families instant access to movies and TV shows for kids. Developed in partnership with digital company Rovi, the service features more than 4,000 titles from leading entertainment companies including 20th Century Fox, Gaiam Vivendi Entertainment, Lionsgate/Summit, NBCUniversal, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, The Walt Disney Studios and Warner Bros. Entertainment.

There's a new outfit from Victoria's Secret's "Go East" collection that's getting blasted by critics for crossing the line from theme-wear to offensive. "Sexy Little Geisha" is a skimpy teddy, advertised as a "ticket to an exotic adventure … with flirty cutouts and Eastern-inspired florals." The lingerie company has since redirected users looking for the product's page, along with the rest of the "Go East" collection, to the site's main homepage.

Like eBay, Etsy has a list of items that its third-party merchants are prohibited from selling. The company spent the past several months conducting extensive research to maintain Etsy as a safe marketplace for both shoppers and sellers, and it looked into such issues as those surrounding the sale of human bones and the corrosive and toxic properties of mercury. While items on its prohibited list may be subject to legal regulations, some aren't, and, "when it comes right down to it, some things just aren't in the spirit of Etsy," the company wrote.

When Blake Mycoskie founded TOMS shoes six years ago, his pitch to consumers -- buy a pair and a second one will be donated to the needy -- helped start a phenomenon retail consultants call compassionate consumerism. Since then it has been imitated widely by established brands. Inspired by TOMS, Skechers USA Inc. (SKX) (SKX) introduced a brand called BOBS, as in Benefiting Others By Shoes. Urban Outfitters Inc. (URBN) (URBN) stores feature apparel by Threads for Thought, which gives part of its sales proceeds to humanitarian groups.

Online merchandising teams spend considerable time grouping items together and deciding which products to display when consumers enter specific search terms. Likewise, SEM teams dedicate resources to identify the keywords and phrases that lead to the most relevant landing pages. What these teams rarely do is share how their efforts can be integrated to produce results.