Hot Mid Cap Companies For 2015

Hot Mid Cap Companies For 2015: Urban Outfitters Inc.(URBN)

Urban Outfitters Inc. operates lifestyle specialty retail stores under the Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, Free People, Terrain, and BHLDN brand names in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Its Urban Outfitters stores sell women?s and men?s fashion apparel, footwear, accessories, and gifts, as well as apartment wares, such as rugs, pillows, shower curtains, books, candles, and novelties to young adults aged 18 to 28; and Anthropologie stores provide women?s casual apparel and accessories, shoes, gifts, and decorative items, as well as home furnishings, including furniture, rugs, lighting, antiques, table top items, and bedding to women aged 28 to 45. The company?s Free People stores primarily offer Free People branded merchandise mix of casual women?s apparel, intimates, shoes, accessories, and gifts to young contemporary women aged 25 to 30; Terrain store provides lifestyle home and garden products, antiques, live plants, flowers, wellness products, and accessori es, as well as landscape and design service solutions; and BHLDN store offers a range of weeding collections consisting of wedding gowns, bridesmaid frocks, party dresses, assorted jewelry, headpieces, footwear, lingerie, and decorations. As of January 31, 2012, it operated 197 Urban Outfitters stores, 168 Anthropologie stores, 62 Free People stores, 1 Terrain garden center, and 1 BHLDN store. The company also operates a wholesale business under the Free People brand name that distributes apparel to other retailers and department stores in the United States. In addition, it markets its brands directly to consumers through its e-commerce Websites, including urbanoutfitters.com, anthropologie.com, freepeople.com, urbanoutfitters.co.uk, urbanoutfitters.de, urbanoutfitters.fr, anthropologie.eu, shopterrain.com, and bhldn.com, as well as through its Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, and Free Peopl! e catalogs. The company was founded in 1970 and is based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvani a.< /p> Advisors' Opinion:

• [By WWW.DAILYFINANCE.COM]

  Kevin Britland/Alamy There were plenty of winners and losers this week, with the world's largest software company making a major gaming acquisition and one mall retailer once again turning to notoriety to draw attention. Here's a rundown of the week's smartest moves and biggest blunders. Netflix (NFLX) -- Winner Netflix took the next step in its global invasion by launching its service in France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium and Luxembourg this week. These will be competitive markets in Old World territories that are protective of their homegrown talent, but it's important for Netflix to keep stamping its passport by pushing into new countries. Netflix is also beefing up its catalog of original content. This week it struck a deal to carry two seasons of a new show that Judd Apatow co-created and wrote. The initial 10-episode season of "Love" won't be made available until 2016. The 12-episode second season will follow in 2017. However, it's one more reason that Netflix should be able to retain its growing subscriber base. Urban Outfitters (URBN) -- Loser The edgy mall retailer has gone too far again. Urban Outfitters took down the product page for a vintage Kent State University sweatshirt that it was selling online on Monday. It featured splattered red splotches that make it seem as if they are blood stains. Obviously this will hit too close to home to anyone who remembers the tragic 1970 massacre at Kent State. Urban Outfitters knew what it was doing. It had priced the sweatshirt at $129, claiming that only one was available. Urban Outfitters has left the public shaking its head at some of its edgier decisions, which have included an outfit that mocks depression and shirts that read "Eat less" and "Jesus, I'm drunk." This one seems to have outdone those earlier stunts in its pursuit for negative publicity. Microsof! t (MSFT) ! -- Winner Microsoft is a company that has never shied away from 10-figure acquisitions, and it's at it again with the $2.

• [By Ben Rooney]

  The $129 sweatshirt has been removed from Urban Outfitters (URBN)' website. But images of the sweatshirt, which has red spots on it that critics say resemble blood stains, have been widely circulated online.

• [By WWW.DAILYFINANCE.COM]

  Jin Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images NEW YORK -- Alison LePard, a 19-year-old college sophomore from Wellesley, Massachusetts, says that when she shops for clothes and accessories, her goal is a look that is uniquely hers. So she does a lot of mixing and matching. "I don't blindly follow what they put out," LePard said of store displays. "I don't want to wear just one brand. I don't want to be a stereotype." She's hardly alone. Recent surveys have found that members of the millennial generation -- the roughly 80 million Americans born between 1977 and 2000 -- pride themselves on their individuality, and shop accordingly. Compared with their parents, millennials are far less likely to identify with a political party or to formally affiliate with a religion -- key indicators of an independent streak -- according to Pew Research Center. As shoppers, they are less attached to brands and more willing to create their own style, surveys by Nielsen, The Boston Consulting Group and other researchers have found. This generational trait is forcing retailers to rethink everything from their merchandise and marketing to their dressing rooms and logos. Some companies, including H&M and Urban Outfitters (URBN), have ridden the individuality wave while others, such as Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF) and Aeropostale (ARO), have been slow to react and are paying the price. At stake is the $600 billion millennials spend a year in the United States, according to Accenture (ACN), a sum that's projected to grow to an estimated $1.4 trillion in 2020, when the oldest of the cohort will be 43. Millennial m! en spend ! twice as much a year on apparel as non-millennial men, while millennial women outspent other generations by a third, the consultants said.

  [Millennials] no longer want to be a walking billboard of a brand. Individualism is important to them, having their own sense of style.

source from Top Stocks For 2015:http://www.topstocksblog.com/hot-mid-cap-companies-for-2015.html