Merchandising

JCPenney on Monday announced its plans to debut its beauty concept in stores nationwide, following a successful pilot launch in fall 2021 with 10 brick-and-mortar locations. JCPenney Beauty will expand to 300 stores by early 2023 and 600 stores by the spring, the company announced in a press release. The beauty concept within JCPenney stores…

One of the first references to Christmas in July was in an 1892 French opera when in response to children singing Christmas carols during the summer a character says, “When you sing Christmas in July, you rush the season.” For retailers, the idea of planning Christmas in July is anything but rushing the season. A…

J.Jill has entered a new chapter in its brand evolution with the launch of its Welcome Everybody campaign, which includes an expanded product assortment. In this video interview, Total Retail's Joe Keenan speaks with Claire Spofford, CEO of J.Jill, about the brand's new initiative to provide one size-integrated shopping destination for all women with price parity across…

Back-to-school is upon us and with it comes a big business opportunity — not just for computers and supplies, but adaptive apparel as well. Schoolwear brand French Toast recently launched a new adaptive wear line, French Toast Adaptive, ahead of the back-to-school season. In this video interview, Alyson Shapero, vice president of brand, digital and wholesale…

Add-to-cart rate is the percentage of visitors that add at least one product to their shopping cart during their session. This metric often indicates the success of product marketing, optimization of product pages, and overall promotion. When an online marketer googles topics such as “increase add-to-cart rate” and “e-commerce conversion rates,” the most common suggestions…

Product cannibalization is a common topic amongst our retail partners when we discuss assortment expansion via drop-ship and marketplace. There’s a misconception that by surfacing more items online from supplier brand partners it will potentially impact sales of owned inventory in a negative way. In our experience, this is rarely a concern as long as…

Excess inventory. Losing pace with shifts in customer behavior. Erosion of gross margin. Selling on markdowns. Missing forecasts. No time for innovation. What do these have in common? These are the symptoms of a retailer suffering from a lack of speed. Speed to market, that is. If you skim recent headlines, this is what you’ll…

As a retailer, you know that it takes a lot of hard work and dedication to keep your business running. And while there are many different aspects of your business that require attention, arguably the most important is your sales. Ninety percent of the information sent to the brain is visual, therefore, a key strategy…

What if retailers could increase their full-margin sales by making informed, customer-centric predictions about what shoppers are likely to buy in the coming months? It's being done already by forward-looking retailers and brands that have invested in transforming how they forecast retail demand. It all starts with understanding why, not what they’re buying. Due to unpredictable…

Sports apparel retailer Lids announced this week that it's launching a new retail concept called Lids University, or Lids U, dedicated to apparel and sports products for the college market. Lids U, which was created as a space for fans to purchase products from their favorite schools, will open in key college markets and serve each…