Despite a challenging two years of sluggish sales, Coldwater Creek announced its has significantly reduced its technology investment and plans for new store openings.

The retailer opened all 10 of its new stores planned in fiscal 2009. According to Tim Martin, Chief Financial Officer, Coldwater Creek, "We expect capital expenditures to approximate $25 million for the full fiscal year 2009 which is down significantly from fiscal 2008 as a result of reduced new store growth plans and lower technology investments."

To regain profitability and growth, Coldwater Creek unveiled it will refine its merchandising and promotional strategies and restore its direct business. The retailer will make adjustments to its value pricing in terms of depth and breadth of promotions and will refine its merchandising strategies.

Coldwater Creek also revealed it will better utilize its multi-channel platform to drive retail sales since catalogs remain its number driver of traffic to our stores. The retailer also will continue to increase the level of personalization in its e-mails as well as expand its efforts to other customer touch points like Web site and call centers.

 

Dollar Tree optimizes inventory assortments after implementing retail technology tailored to meet its unique business model. According to Kevin Wampler, CFO, Dollar Tree, the retailer is using POS data by item and store to make smarter allocation decisions to meet increasing customer demand. Using this critical data, the retailer also has been able to optimize the flow of seasonal product to its stores consistent with sales trends.

"Our inventory productivity continues to accelerate and we've consistently increased our inventory turns over the past four years," says Wampler.

Another key initiative for Dollar Tree has been its growth strategy. In its latest quarter, Dollar Tree opened 94 new stores and relocated and expanded another 33 stores. For the year, the retailer opened 240 new stores and relocated and expanded 75 stores for a total of 315 projects this year. Dollar Tree ended its third quarter with a total of 3,803 stores.

 

Barnes and Noble Unveils New Digital Initiative

Barnes and Noble is ramping up its technology investments in a new digital initiative.

"Our digital strategy is much more about selling e-books," says Stephen Riggio, Vice Chairman of the Board and CEO, Barnes and Noble. "We will soon be selling a much, much wider range of content, digital content than what we offer in physical format, either through our stores or online. We will be selling new and archived newspapers, blogs, magazines, periodicals and journals. And our strategy has been to make all this content available to readers wherever they are, from a Nook device, PC, a Mac, a smartphone, as well as from a coming wave of new devices with ever more amazing capabilities."

The retailer continues to enhance its multi-channel strategy in other ways and is now offering a new "pick-me-up service" which allows customers to use the retailer's Web site to reserve any book that is in stock and can pick it up in stores within 60 minutes.

The retailer also launched its new e-bookstore this year, which according to Riggio "took the promise of any book, anywhere, anytime to a new level, enabling customers to download e-books in second to more platforms than any other online bookseller."

"In order to meet this overwhelming demand and to continue to serve this fast growing market, we are ramping up our production schedule and increasing our investments in the necessary people and technology to establish a strong market position," adds Riggio.