Good morning. Thursday was one of those days where the macro noise nearly drowned out the retail-specific headlines, but there was still plenty to unpack: a department store that finally has something to brag about, a warehouse club stuck in a stubborn slide, and a nearly 40-year-old flagship saying goodbye to its five floors. Let’s get into it.
Twenty-five years later, September 11 remains a day that changed America forever.
We remember the nearly 3,000 people who lost their lives, the families whose lives were forever altered, and the first responders who ran toward danger while others were running away.
We also remember what followed: communities coming together, strangers helping strangers, and a renewed appreciation for the people and principles that unite us.
Today, we pause to remember those we lost, honor those who served, and reflect on the resilience that emerged from one of the darkest days in our history.
We will never forget.
🇺🇸
Today is on the house
Latest Retail Tech News
Domestic
Target spent Thursday showing off its AI toolkit. The retailer rolled out a suite of new AI-powered shopping features designed to sharpen product discovery and personalization, building on the Review Insights tool it launched in June, which summarizes shopper feedback to help guide purchase decisions, and the AI-supported Photo Search feature it added to its app in August that lets customers snap or upload an image to find matching products. It is the latest sign that Target wants AI to feel less like a gimmick and more like a genuine shortcut to the right product.
Retailers also got a fresh data point on how big this holiday season might get, and e-commerce looks like the engine pulling it forward. A Thursday Deloitte forecast projects total holiday retail sales between 4 percent and 4.8 percent growth year over year, landing between $1.7 trillion and $1.71 trillion for the November through January stretch, with online sales expected to outpace overall growth. If that holds, AI-assisted shopping tools like Target’s new features could end up doing a lot of the heavy lifting this November and December.
Global
Up in Toronto, Mercedes-Benz gave its Holt Renfrew Studio a refresh, debuting the Canadian preview of the 2027 S-Class alongside a new in-store residency from luxury fashion brand Paul & Shark. It’s a small but telling example of automakers leaning on premium retail real estate to reach shoppers who might never set foot in a dealership. Meanwhile, a Salesforce study making the rounds in Canadian retail circles found that nearly four in ten Canadian shoppers used AI tools for product discovery, price comparisons, or deal hunting over the past year, another reminder that AI adoption in shopping journeys isn’t just a U.S. story.
Store Openings and Closings
Domestic
September’s closure wave keeps rolling. Walgreens, Nordstrom, JCPenney, Neiman Marcus, Lucky, and West Marine are all shuttering individual locations this month as the pressures of bankruptcy, restructuring, and plain old underperformance continue to reshape store footprints heading into fall. Neiman Marcus’s flagship in Dallas is among the notable closures tracked this month, a symbolic hit for a brand that has called the city home for generations. As always, the reasons vary store to store, but the throughline is retailers concentrating resources on their strongest locations rather than spreading thin.
Global
The bigger story north of the border belongs to Harry Rosen. The Canadian menswear institution is closing its iconic five-level flagship at 82 Bloor Street West in Toronto on September 12, after nearly 40 years in that space. It isn’t going away, though. The retailer is relocating to a smaller, more modern three-level store just 200 metres away on Cumberland Street, a move that fits the broader pattern of retailers trading size for efficiency rather than disappearing altogether. That shift is showing up in the numbers, too: Canada’s retail vacancy rate is projected to stay elevated near 2.5 percent as the market keeps absorbing the fallout from last year’s Hudson’s Bay closures, which sharply increased mall vacancies across the country.
Retail Stocks
Thursday was a rough session for the broader market, and retail didn’t get much cover. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 316.20 points, or 0.60 percent, to 52,064. The S&P 500 dropped 44.57 points, or 0.58 percent, to 7,591, and the Nasdaq slid 171.62 points, or 0.65 percent, to 26,081. It marked a fourth straight losing day for the S&P, its longest such stretch since mid-March. The culprits were familiar: a hotter-than-expected Producer Price Index reading, with headline PPI up 5.4 percent year over year against expectations of 5.3 percent, oil prices topping $100 a barrel on Middle East supply fears, and Treasury yields climbing to multi-year highs. Traders are now pricing in roughly a 70 percent chance of a Fed rate move at next week’s meeting, up sharply from 62 percent before Thursday’s data.
Against that backdrop, Macy’s was the rare retail bright spot. The department store raised its annual sales and profit outlook after a stronger-than-expected quarter, powered by its upmarket Bloomingdale’s and Bluemercury banners. Macy’s now expects fiscal 2026 sales of $21.68 billion to $21.83 billion, up from its prior view of $21.5 billion to $21.75 billion, alongside a better earnings outlook. Second-quarter sales rose 1.1 percent year over year to $4.87 billion, topping analyst estimates, with Bloomingdale’s comparable sales up an impressive 11.3 percent.
Costco had the opposite day. Shares extended a losing streak into a seventh straight session, down in 10 of the last 11 trading days and hovering around $900, their lowest level since the start of the year. Elsewhere in the warehouse and value space, Dollar General shares rose 0.45 percent to $125.07, Dollar Tree gained 0.24 percent to $118.68, BJ’s Wholesale climbed 1.54 percent to $89.90, Ollie’s Bargain Outlet added 0.35 percent to $72.64, while Target slipped 0.83 percent to $156.22.
Apparel had a tougher time. American Eagle Outfitters shares fell after its earnings report, as strength at its Aerie brand was offset by softness at the flagship banner and continued markdown pressure. The company forecast flat quarterly gross margins and kept its annual comparable sales outlook intact despite beating second-quarter revenue estimates, though inventory costs climbed 14 percent during the quarter. Designer Brands posted second-quarter revenue of $730.6 million with adjusted earnings per share of $0.31, though comparable sales fell 2.4 percent year over year, and the footwear retailer guided to full-year net sales growth of just 0 to 1 percent.
Culturally Relevant Stories
If you caught a whiff of nostalgia at the multiplex Thursday, you weren’t imagining it. Practical Magic 2 hit theaters, and SharkNinja used the moment to launch four new Ninja SLUSHi Twist colorways in custom packaging tied to the film’s now-iconic “Midnight Margaritas” scene. It’s a reminder that retail tie-ins around nostalgic sequels remain a reliable way to get a kitchen gadget trending again, decades after the original film first built its cult following.
Market watchers also noticed a quieter but telling signal Thursday: the CBOE Volatility Index broke above 17 for the first time in 28 straight sessions, closing as high as 18.17 intraday. After nearly a month of unusually calm trading, that shift in sentiment, paired with rising oil prices and sticky inflation data, is worth keeping an eye on as retailers head into the critical holiday planning stretch. A jumpy market rarely makes for a relaxed peak season.
That’s the rundown for Thursday. See you back here tomorrow for another lap around the retail world.