Retail executives will continue to face a mixed job market in 1998, according to Thorndike Deland Associates, a New York-based executive search firm.
Hiring will be flat at department stores and mass merchandisers, but there will be strong demand for executives among specialty retailers. That’s not because specialty retailers are growing, however. Rather, lots of heads have rolled because of poor performance.
“Specialty stores are going through a cyclical cleansing and will be looking for senior people to reposition their businesses for better results,” said Thorndike Deland partner Joseph Carideo.
One especially hot sector is expected to be specialty stores with entertainment and sports themes, he predicted.
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On Christmas cards: For many retailers, Christmas 1997 was another ho-hummer. But Visa U.S.A. couldn’t be happier with its holiday numbers.
The number of Visa card transactions soared 17 percent to 541 million in December compared with last year, according to the San Francisco-based credit card giant. Visa’s dollar volume rose 16 percent to $35.8 billion.
Obvious conclusion: U.S. shoppers once again binged on credit to finance their holiday buying. In comparison, purchases by check rose only 2.2 percent during the holidays, according to TeleCheck Services, the country’s biggest check approval company.
But it’s more complicated than that, says Visa spokesman Albert Coscia. A chunk of those Visa transactions were on “debit” cards. Visa calls them “check” cards because they look like credit cards but act like checks, withdrawing money from a customer’s checking account to pay for purchases.
Although Visa can’t provide specific numbers, “Certainly a substantial portion of the (December) increase can be attributed to the debit card,” Coscia said.
Indeed, debit card use is on a roll, increasing at a 50 percent compound rate for the past four years. But it’s still a drop in the bucket compared with Visa’s credit card business.
From sluggish to stellar: Dayton Hudson Corp.’s stock has been on a roller-coaster ride during December. After starting the month around $72 a share, shares in the Minneapolis-based retailer had fallen 13.5 percent to $61.87 by Christmas Eve.
Investors took fright after Dayton Hudson said December sales at Target, Mervyn’s and its department store division, which includes Marshall Field’s, were all running below plan.
But the gloom didn’t last long. On Dec. 29, Dayton Hudson said a last-minute throng of shoppers had pushed sales back on track. The company’s stock price soared 10 percent the next day, closing at $68.37 a share.
The demise of dressing up: A majority of U.S. office workers have the option to dress casually every day of the week, a 20 percent rise in the last two years, according to a national poll of almost 900 white-collar workers.
The survey, commissioned by denim king Levi Strauss & Co., also found that 9 out of 10 office workers are allowed to dress casually at least occasionally. And 30 percent of office workers say their work clothes generally have become more casual in the past year. Moreover, half of those who cannot dress casually every day want to be able to more often.
They needed a survey to figure that out?