Retail roundup: Tangerine Tango, Glamour magazine, Nordstrom

By Shan Li

Feb. 18, 2012 12 AM PT

--2012 is the year of the color orange. Or to be more precise, it’s the year of “Tangerine Tango,” which the Pantone Color Institute dubbed the dominant hue of 2012.

The institute, a research arm of color-matching firm Pantone Inc., forecasts the most popular color each year by pondering factors such as news events, pop culture, designer shows and consumer trends, according to the Associated Press.

This year, apparently, Tangerine Tango will reign.

“There’s the element of encouragement with orange, it’s building on the ideas of courage and action, that we want to move on to better things,” Leatrice Eiseman, the institute’s executive director, told the AP. “I think it would be a disservice to go with a relaxed, soothing color now.”

--Glamour magazine is testing a barcode-enabled shopping wall to empower smartphone owners to buy beauty products on the go.

The wall, set up in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, features photos of items from Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, Clearasil and other brands. Shoppers can scan the barcodes attached to each product with a smartphone app and make purchases on the spot.

Bill Wackermann, publishing director of Glamour parent company Conde Nast, told Advertising Age that the wall was inspired by a similar experiment by British grocery store giant Tesco.

“We thought, ‘How can we bring that here?’ ” Wackermann said. “We’re not about supermarkets, but we are about beauty products.”

--Benefiting from a resurgence of well-to-do shoppers, department store chain Nordstrom reported positive fourth-quarter and annual results.

For the quarter ended Jan. 28, Nordstrom posted a profit of $236 million, a 1.7% bump over the same period a year earlier. Sales rose to $3.17 billion, a 12.5% increase from $2.82 billion in the fourth quarter of its 2010 fiscal year.

For the entire year, profit was up $70 million to $683 million, a 11.4% gain from the previous year. Nordstrom said annual sales totaled a record $10.50 billion, a 12.7% increase compared with $9.31 billion in 2010.

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