On April 14, 2012, JCPenney celebrated its 110th birthday. With 1,100 stores in 49 states, it remains a symbol of “Middle American retailing,” despite several years of hard times and declining sales and profits. Revenues plunged from $20 billion in 2006 to $17 billion last year as The Great Recession took a heavy toll on the core Penney working family customer. In late 2011, the board hired Ron Johnson, the former head of Apple retail stores and the guy who invented their Genius Bar, to … [Read more...]

Ann Inc., the $2 billion U.S. women's specialty retail powerhouse with 950 stores and 5.6 million square feet of selling space, got its start in 1954 as a dress shop in New Haven, Connecticut. The company went public in the late Eighties, when baby boomer women were joining the workforce in droves and couldn’t get enough of the brand’s updated corporate style. The growth continued for the next decade and a half, then slowed as the corporate casual dressing trend took hold. Sales peaked at … [Read more...]

Over the past several years, label and office products maker Avery-Dennison has become the largest global supplier of tickets and tags for apparel, and an increasingly important player in the retail industry. Last month, the company’s Retail Branding and Information Solutions (RBIS) group (http://www.apparel.averydennison.com/) opened its first European Customer Design and Innovation Center in Sprockhovel, Germany. There, the company introduced powerful new and enhanced capabilities in … [Read more...]

Called “The Lifestyle King” by many, this icon of American Style, born Ralph Lifshitz in the Bronx in 1939, has almost single-handedly transformed the US apparel market. His company, started in 1967,  will pass $5.5 billion in sales this year and, at a time when many are struggling to salvage their brands, is picking and choosing which markets to enter, licenses to buy back, and product lines to launch. Will international growth be the vehicle to another phase of sustained meteoric … [Read more...]

Destination Maternity is a leading branded designer and retailer of clothes for pregnant women, and the only nationwide chain of maternity apparel stores. Two years into its restructuring, the company  has returned to profitability by slashing expenses, controlling inventory, and lowering product costs. With the recession  now behind it, the retailer must turn its attention to sales growth, which it hopes to achieve by leveraging its brand equity and product expertise and rolling out in-store … [Read more...]

 This youth-culture-steeped retailer just turned 32, but its customers are still 16. With high-energy stores and strong merchandise assortment of action-sports-inspired apparel, Zumiez (“ZOO-meez”) has an impressive track record, having posted a profit every year in business. With a doubling of its stock price in 2010, making it a top retail performer last year, this company seems poised for even better days ahead as the economy improves and teens start to trade up again in their spending. … [Read more...]

  The thirty-year-old company with its distinctive logo and award-winning advertising campaign will reach sales of almost $2.5 billion this year. While remaining true to its core 18-32-year-old fashion-conscious contemporary consumer by catering to the daughters of its original customers, Guess? realizes that if it is to grow, it must stay on the move in more ways than just demographics. With the mature US retail market putting the brakes on growth, the Marciano brothers have found that going … [Read more...]

Though its styles have for decades been staid and conservative, over the past two years Talbots has made some bold changes in its business that are anything but. Whether the transformation of this retail icon will be successful or not depends on many factors, not the least of which is whether its new target customer is anywhere near as loyal as the old one was.  Company History Talbots was started in 1947 in the Boston suburb of Hingham, MA by Rudy Talbots and his Radcliffe-educated wife … [Read more...]

Once a source for cheap household gadgets, miracle face cream and impulse-purchase jewelry, home shopping channel HSN has undergone a makeover over the past few years that has transformed the $2.8 billion company into a key cog in the fashion retailing wheel.  With top designers and celebrity television hosts romancing products like Lancome moisture cream and Badgley Mischka ready-to-wear, and selling tons of it in the process, the company has shed a lot of its downmarket image and become a … [Read more...]

Like the athletes they sell to, sporting goods retailers  - particularly those of the big box variety - must work hard to stay on top of their game. Some find it difficult. The Sports Authority went private, worn down by its poorly-performing stock. Regional chains like Modell’s and Big 5 have decided to remain relatively small by sticking close to home. REI and Cabela’s focus on specialty products.  But Coraopolis, PA-based Dick’s Sporting Goods (DKS) has its sights on dramatically … [Read more...]