Sears Gets a Lifeline: Bankruptcy Judge Approves Sale to Lampert
February 8, 2019 at 2:47 pm

Sears Holdings got a new lifeline yesterday as its sale to company chairman Eddie Lampert, through an affiliate of his hedge fund ESL Investments, was approved by a federal bankruptcy court judge, according to CNBC. ESL has said the $5.2 billion deal to buy Sears will save 425 stores and roughly 45,000 jobs. While an initial…

NRF: Retail Sales to Increase Up to 4.4% in 2019
February 5, 2019 at 3:24 pm

The National Retail Federation (NRF) is calling for retail sales, excluding automobile dealers, gasoline stations and restaurants, to climb between 3.8 and 4.4 percent this year, amounting to as much as $3.84 trillion. That would be less than growth of 4.6 percent in 2018, which the NRF says is its preliminary estimate for retail sales last…

Michaels to Shutter Pat Catan's Stores
January 31, 2019 at 2:37 pm

The Michaels Companies announced this week that it will close all of its Pat Catan’s stores in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2018 (March). Pat Catan’s is a retailer of arts and crafts in Ohio and surrounding states, including Pennsylvania, Michigan and West Virginia. Michaels intends to rebrand 12 of the 36 Pat Catan’s stores…

5 Key Retail Trends for 2019
January 31, 2019 at 2:20 pm

From our work with companies across the retail spectrum — from U.K. grocery to U.S. apparel — we witness the ongoing transformations taking place. Here are our perspectives on what 2019 might have in store, and some key questions to ask when evaluating existing and new retail strategies. Social Commerce Boom Increased usage of Facebook,…

FAO Schwarz: Back from the Dead
January 31, 2019 at 12:31 pm

FAO Schwarz, the iconic toy retailer, closed its last store, the New York City Fifth Avenue flagship, in 2015. Dead and gone? Not quite. The buyer of the FAO intellectual property (purchased in 2016), ThreeSixtyGroup, opened a new flagship in New York’s Rockefeller Plaza on Nov. 16, 2018 to much fanfare. Will this brand revival…