Retail Stores

eBags' holiday sales were up 33 percent year-over-year through Dec. 6, more than doubling comScore's 15 percent holiday estimate. To get some insight on what eBags did right this holiday season, I contacted Peter Cobb the retailer's co-founder.

Same-store sales are looking a little flat and you need to find ways to deliver better results. There's still a scent of the financial meltdown lingering, but you survived that crisis and it's time to start getting the sales needle moving in a positive direction.

A fringe Christian pressure group has attributed Tesco's recent poor sales to divine intervention, claiming that "God has answered our prayers for confusion in the Tesco boardroom." Christian Voice, a prayer and campaigning organization that claims to have nearly 2,000 members across the U.K., protested outside Tesco shops towards the end of last year over the company's decision to sponsor a family area at the Gay Pride celebrations in London.

After a season full of peaks and valleys, retailers' 2011 holiday sales beat expectations, rising 4.1 percent to $471.5 billion — slightly surpassing NRF's holiday sales forecast of 3.8 percent growth. 

Williams-Sonoma, a $3 billion juggernaut with 268 stores nationwide, could face an uphill battle over its plans to return to Sonoma, Calif. and open a store at the original site on Broadway.

Retail sales barely rose in December, but the gain was enough to push sales to a record for 2011. It was the largest annual increase in more than a decade. Sales inched up 0.1 percent in December to a seasonally adjusted $400.6 billion.

Kohl's is the recipient of the People's Pick award in the Harris Poll Customer Relationship Series. The award recognizes the strength of consumers' bonds with midtier department stores and reflects their connections and future intentions.

Returns are often emotionally charged events. Think about it: Customers return things that don’t fit, they don’t like, can’t afford, don’t need, don’t want or weren’t what they expected. For many customers, returns are embarrassing, filled with disappointment, frustration or, at the very least, a major inconvenience. How you handle this touchy situation could very well impact your customer’s decision to continue doing business with you.

Storied French luxury brand Hermes isn't known for being cheap, and soon it's about to become even more expensive. The company stated back in November that it was planning to raise prices in several markets, including this one, due to "significant raw-material cost increases, particularly for silk, cashmere and crocodile skin."

Luxury retailer Sephora has deployed a mobile point-of-sale solution in a large number of its U.S. stores using software from Agilysys and RedIron on Apple iPod touch devices. "We wanted a solution that seamlessly integrates and extends our SAP POS system via a mobile POS customer-engagement experience," said Sephora vice president of retail store systems Shah Nagree in a statement.