Sears Holdings (NASDAQ: SHLD), a retailer whose competitive colleagues include Target (NYSE: TGT), Best Buy (NYSE: BBY), and Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT), wants to improve its brand equity and find a new path to growth. As such, it's willing to employ all kinds of initiatives, especially ones that will form a nice image with the consumer during this dreadful economic contraction.

According to The Wall Street Journal (subscription required), Sears is trying out a program that offers protection against the risk of investing in an expensive appliance during a time when job security is not as secure as it used to be.

The program will run for a specified time period beginning next week, and the basic gist is this: buy an appliance priced $399 or higher on a Sears credit card and, and if you lose your job, Sears will credit one twelfth of the cost every month. Still no job after one year? Keep the appliance, your debt will be forgiven.

Recession or not, people can't walk around naked ... especially not in the United Kingdom. (Iceland in summer? Fair game.) Marks & Spencer Group Plc (London: MKS:UK), the largest clothing retailer in the country, just sustained its smallest drop in sales in nearly two years thanks to some savvy deals (offered to consumers) and warm weather. After making their dollars pounds stretch for so long, shoppers were finally ready for a bit of style.

Revenue declined a modest 1.4% for the year so far, much better than the 2.5% average estimate offered by 16 analysts. This was good enough to push M&S shares up 4%. If all goes well, same store sales may start to increase soon, which means that a full recovery will be right around the corner. Same store sales have fallen for the past seven quarters, and company cut its dividend for the first time in almost a decade.

The discounts that helped lead to the recent M&S sales performance are responsible for 18% of the company's food sales (which are down 0.5% on for same store) – much better than the 2.4% estimate. General merchandise fell only 2.4%, beating the 3.5% projection handily.

Nike, Inc. (NYSE: NKE), best known for its sporting apparel and footwear, reported earnings after the close today. Earnings per share, after certain adjustments, were $0.99 on $4.71 billion in revenue, compared to the $0.96 average expected from analysts. The consensus revenue target was $4.74 billion. Excluding non-comparable items, full year diluted EPS was up 10% to $3.81, although the company said worldwide futures orders were down 12% when the impact of currency changes were taken into account. Shares were off 1% during the trading day, and fell further shortly following the announcement.

Observers will be watching to see how well Nike's sales have held up as consumer spending has slowed, and whether or not the company is making strides in its effort to reduce costs and rationalize its advertising budget. Nike has cut 5% of its global workforce in an effort to save hundreds of millions, and management recently indicated that endorsement contract costs have fallen somewhat.

Home goods retailer Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. (NASDAQ: BBBY) reported earnings today after the market closed, announcing earnings per share (EPS) of $0.34 compared with analyst consensus of $0.25 and results of $0.30 in the prior quarter last year. Revenues of $1.7 billion also topped estimates, rising 2.8%, although comparable store sales fell 1.6%. Shares were up about 2.5% in trading today, and jumped following the announcement.

In addition to its eponymous store chain, the company also owns Christmas Tree Shops, Harmon, and buybuy BABY. The flagship Bed Bath & Beyond stores make up approximately 90% of the more than 1,000 total locations the company operates.

A down day for the market and an earnings release that left nothing to be excited about hurt shares of Walgreen Company (NYSE: WAG) today, with shares off more than 6% heading into the close. The drugstore chain, with more than 7,000 locations, reported earnings of 53 cents per share; analysts expected 56 cents on average with a low of 54 cents. Earnings in the same quarter the year before amounted to 58 cents per share.

Sales for the quarter were up 8% overall, with comparable store sales growth up 2.8%. This was largely driven by increased sales of prescription drugs in the quarter, which were up 8.2% to comprise more than 65% of revenues.

Walgreen (NYSE: WAG), a drugstore business that competes with CVS Caremark (NYSE: CVS) and Rite-Aid (NYSE: RAD), will be issuing results for the third quarter on Monday, June 22. According to Earnings.com, the analyst community is prescribing $0.56 per share for the company.

Of course, the question is: will Walgreen honor that prescription and fill it? I'd say it's quite possible. Last time around, Walgreen beat estimates. The call was for $0.66 per share in Q2. If you look at the press release from that time, you'll see that, once you adjust for some items, Walgreen went beyond expectations.

Retail sales took an unexpected downward turn in May in the United Kingdom -- for first time in three months. Cautious banks appear to be the problem, as their rationing of credit is impeding broader economic recovery. Retail sales fell 0.6% from the previous month, while economists had predicted a 0.3% change in the other direction.

Year-over-year, retail sales were off 1.6%. Sales for the year are down 1.1%, the greatest decline since score-keeping began in 1988. Of course, there's plenty of fodder for rationalizing the results. The annual change was affected by an "unusually large" retail sales estimate for May 2008. Clothing, textile, and footwear retailers and department stores led the plunge, with nonfood store sales off 1.4%, compared to a 0.3% increase in food retail sales.

Pacific Sunwear (NASDAQ: PSUN) has been losing money and ground in the specialty/teen retailing business, so the company has decided to turn to a new CEO, one with quite a bit of experience in the surfing and skating world. The new head man at PSUN will be Gary H. Schoenfeld, the former CEO at Vans.

The 46-year-old Schoenfeld replaces Sally Frame Kasaks, who had served as CEO since 2006 and board chairwoman since 2007. According to the company, Kasaks will continue to remain with the company as a director. Schoenfeld will take the helm of the retailer on June 29.

Shares of La-Z-Boy (NYSE: LZB) have simply exploded over the last few months. Talk about an incredible trade.

Well, it was an incredible trade for anyone brave enough to fool with a low-priced stock. La-Z-Boy closed on Monday at $3.64 per share. Back in March, the stock was under a buck. Can't say I'm sorry I didn't buy it. Well, let me amend that statement. I'm a little sorry I didn't buy it. But I think the reader knows what I mean: purchasing stocks under a dollar per share is dangerous work at best.

Best Buy (NYSE: BBY), the electronics mecca that competes with retailers such as Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT), Target (NYSE: TGT), Sears (NASDAQ: SHLD), and GameStop (NYSE: GME), will be issuing earnings for the first fiscal quarter on Tuesday, June 16. According to this source, Best Buy will see a decline in net income. Analysts believe that the retailer will do $0.34 per share, which represents a drop of about 20%.

But, according to that same source, Best Buy has beaten the analysts at their game in the last two quarters. If you ask me, I think the company has a good chance of beating the forecast yet again. With all the euphoria in the equities market as of late, and with all the talk about the recession possibly coming to an end late this year, I feel that consumers must have been in a better mood in the most recent quarter. And one would assume a big name like Best Buy would get its share of the traffic.

Last time I covered Talbots (NYSE: TLB), I was very bearish. I didn't like the stock's prospects. Since then, it's been up. The retailer, which counts Macy's (NYSE: M) and Ann Taylor (NYSE: ANN) as colleagues, has also seen its stock nearly double since the beginning of the year. But the company is still struggling, as the numbers from the fiscal first quarter clearly show. What am I missing?

Revenues from continuing operations declined 26%. The net loss on an adjusted basis was 23 cents per share. That was worse than last year's results for the similar quarter. Much worse. There was a profit of 42 cents per share at that time. The most dismal aspect of the current quarter can be found in the same-store sales statistic. Comps were simply massacred. They plummeted almost 27%! What a bloodbath.

Men's Wearhouse (NYSE: MW) reported first-quarter results after the close Monday. Earnings dropped 47% compared to a year ago. Although earnings contracted due to fewer customers, cost-cutting measures helped the company top the consensus estimate and forecast solid second-quarter earnings.

First-quarter earnings checked in at 10 cents per share for the quarter, down from 19 cents per share a year ago but far better than the Street's forecast loss of a penny per share. Quarterly sales dropped 6% to $464.1 million from $491.1 million a year ago, as clothing product sales dropped 7.6%. Nevertheless, sales topped the consensus estimate of $459.3 million.

Guess? Inc. (NYSE: GES), a fashion retailer that competes in the mall with companies like Abercrombie & Fitch (NYSE: ANF), Gap (NYSE: GPS), and JCPenney (NYSE: JCP), told the market how it did in Q1 on Thursday after the bell. As I write this during the early afternoon on Friday, shares of Guess? are up well over 6% on very good volume. Was there something to this earnings report?

I didn't think the numbers were particularly fetching. Revenues declined nearly 10%, thanks in part to the effects of currency translation (maybe that should be no thanks). Earnings per share came in at $0.35, a massive 30% decline. And same-store sales in North America dipped 10% (take out currency, and the dip was 6%, which still wasn't good).

To counterbalance all the green shoots talk, take a walk on the dark side.

Exhibit 1: Chain store sales declined 5% in May, a significant decline that did exclude giant Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT). Guess Joe Consumer still doesn't feel up to shopping much. And Wal-Mart said it will stop reporting monthly sales figures, something that many economists and investors find troubling because that will mean they are losing a key indicator on consumer spending.

Gap Inc. (NYSE: GPS - option chain) stock is falling today after the company reported its same-store sales fell 6% in May, worse than the 5% decline predicted by analysts. If you think this stock won't be rising too far in the coming months, then it could be a good time to look at a bearish hedged play on GPS.

This morning, GPS opened at $17.50. So far today the stock has hit a low of $16.74 and a high of $17.70. As of 11:50, GPS is trading at $16.77, down $1.46 (-8.0%). The chart for GPS looks bearish and S&P gives GPS a negative 2 STARS (out of 5) sell ranking.