OPERATIONS / SUPPLY CHAIN

Mooresville, N.C. -- Lowe's plans to hire approximately 25,000 seasonal employees at its stores in the U.S. during spring, its busiest season. Seasonal jobs available are focused on customer support and include cashiers, lawn and garden employees, loaders, and stockers.

New York – The board of directors of Foot Locker Inc. has elected Steven Oakland as a director of the company. Oakland is currently president -international, foodservice, and natural foods of The J.M. Smucker Company.

Oakland has spent the bulk of his career at The J.M. Smucker Company, serving in increasingly senior positions. He has extensive experience in domestic and international retail operations at the company, having also served as president of U.S. Retail for Smucker's, Jif, and Hungry Jack.

Singapore – F.J. Benjamin Holdings Inc., a developer and manager of retail brands including Gap, Banana Republic and Guess, in Asia, has deployed the traffic intelligence application from Tyco Retail Solutions. The company sought a clear understanding of how the differently branded stores’ locations compared with each other, as well as the ability to track shopper conversion rates within each store.  

Sidney, Neb. -- Richard N. Cabela, co-founder and chairman emeritus of the $3.6 billion, outdoor outfitters chain, Cabela’s Inc., died Monday at his home in Sidney, Neb. No cause was given. He was 77.  

Cabela served as chairman of the board until June 2013, when he transitioned to chairman emeritus and his brother, Jim Cabela, became chairman.

Charlotte, N.C. - Branding and retail marketing agency, Theory House, has named Christopher Durham to the leadership team as VP of retail brands. Durham joins Theory House with more than 20 years of experience developing and managing brands both at the retail level and as a consultant, including work for Office Depot, Best Buy, Food Lion, Hannaford and Lowe’s Home Improvement.

New York – 1-800-Flowers.com Inc. reportedly had a difficult time meeting customer demand for Valentine’s Day. According to CNN, the retailer has sent apologies via Twitter and Facebook to roughly 1,000 customers for deliveries that were late, missing or damaged.

New York -- Revionics, a provider of end-to-end merchandise optimization solutions, appointed the company’s president and CEO Marc Hafner as chairman of the board.

Hafner has served as president and CEO since 2010 and with this newly added role he will lead the company’s strategic planning and accelerate its global growth.

Seattle – Starbucks reportedly plans to soon include an automatic tipping feature on its Square mobile payment app.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Starbucks, which currently only uses the payment features of the Square app, will deploy a feature that both automatically prompts a customer to leave a tip in appropriate situations and computes tip amounts for them.