Consumer Affairs & Relations

While Whole Foods Market continues to work on the performance of its flagship stores, the company disclosed new locations and expressed confidence in its new store concept, “365 by Whole Foods Market,” even though the first location is not scheduled to open until May.

The contingent of athletes representing Canada at this summer’s Olympic games in Brazil will be feeling strong and confident during the opening ceremonies thanks to a new design deal announced by Hudson’s Bay Company.

Hudson's Bay, Canada's iconic retailer, announced that Dean and Dan Caten, Dsquared2 will design the outfit for Team Canada for the Opening Ceremonies at the upcoming 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Rio.

With its share price in free fall after badly missing analysts’ fourth quarter profit estimate, Amazon.com has decided to spend billions buying back its own shares.

Amazon.com disclosed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it named a new board member and its board authorized the company to repurchase up to $5 billion worth of the company’s common stock. The new authorization replaces an existing $2 billion authorization that was approved in 2010, of which only $1.237 had been expended.

Leading sales and marketing solutions provider Advantage Solutions named former Starbucks executive Jeff Hansberry to the newly created position of president and chief commercial officer.

Retail industry sales will grow an estimated 3.1% in 2016, outpacing the 10 year industry average, as economic headwinds diminish, according to a forecast released by the National Retail Federation.

The NRF sales forecast of 3.1% excludes automobiles, gas stations and restaurants and exceeds the 10 year growth rate of 2.7%. Non-store retail sales are forecast to growth between 6% and 9%.

In a sign that omnichannel is becoming more important to Nike’s business, the vertical specialty athletic retailer has named Adam Sussman as its first chief digital officer.

Sussman will report to Trevor Edwards, president of Nike brand.

Prior to joining Nike, Sussman held multiple positions in the interactive gaming and entertainment industries, including EA Mobile and Disney Interactive. He has worked in areas including general management, marketing, strategic planning and digital product commercialization.

Same-store sales literally fell off a cliff at Citi Trends in the waning days of the fourth quarter and the operator of 522 urban fashion stores is attributing the weakness to the federal government.

Staples secured approval of its acquisition of Office Depot from European regulators after agreeing to numerous concessions. Now similar actions may be required if the company is to win over a stubborn U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

Staples said it received approval from the European Union to acquire Office Depot, highlighted a range of actions it took to alleviate the regulator’s competitive concerns and used the action to take a jab at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC).