Labor & Employment

The ripple effects of Walmart’s wage action have extended to Plano, Tex., where home décor retailer At Home has upped the minimum wage ante with a more generous pay plan for hourly workers.

At Home, the company formerly known as Garden Ridge, operates 83 stores in 22 states. Beginning in May, the company said it would pay full-time hourly employees a minimum of $10 an hour and the minimum hourly rate for part-timers will increase to $9 an hour.

Walter J. Salmon, the distinguished Harvard Business School professor who influenced generations of retailers, has died at the age of 84.

Salmon, long one of the world’s leading experts on retailing, retail distribution, and marketing, who for more than 40 years influenced thousands of students, executives and other academics, was the school’s Stanley Roth Sr. Professor of Retailing Emeritus.

As PetSmart officially changes ownership and goes private, the company is also making a leadership move.

The retailer has named retail industry veteran Michael J. Massey as its president and CEO, effective immediately. Massey, who most recently served as CEO and president of Collective Brands Inc., replaces David Lenhardt, who stepped down upon the closing of private equity firm BC Partners’s acquisition of the pet supplies retailer.

Increased sales at Famous Footwear and the divestiture of its Shoes.com website helped Brown Shoe increase profits in the fourth quarter.

Brown Shoe Company reported that same store sales increased 4%, while profit was $16.2 million, or 37 cents a share, for the fourth quarter that ended Jan. 31, up from $6.2 million a year earlier. Adjusted earnings totaled $9 million in the quarter, or 20 cents a share, up from $6.2 million a share, or 14 cents a share, a year earlier. Net sales rose 2.6 percent in the quarter to $615.4 million.

Framingham, Mass. - The majority of small business leaders (87%) are optimistic about the year ahead. According to a recent Staples small business survey conducted online by Research Now, leaders are focused on results, with the top three small business goals in 2015 consisting of increasing revenue (76%), driving profits (70%) and gaining more customers (70%).

Promotional marketing (46%), better organization (38%) and software technology upgrades (35%) are the top tactics small businesses plan to use to meet these goals.

Deliv, the crowdsourced, same-day delivery service used by many omnichannel retailers, has hired an ex-executive at eBay to be its new product chief.

Kenneth Pate, former VP of product management at eBay, will bring a decade of experience in omnichannel execution to the startup. The company says Pate will be responsible for the Deliv experience across the same-day delivery service value chain, which includes retailers, shoppers, drivers and mall operators.

Cincinnati -- Macy announced the completion of its previously announced acquisition of beauty products and spa services retailer Bluemercury, for $210 million in cash.

San Francisco -- Gap Inc., Petco Animal Supplies, Levi Strauss are the only U.S. retail brands to be recognized by the Ethisphere Institute as a 2015 World’s Most Ethical Company.

The annual designation, which recognizes organizations that foster a culture of ethics and transparency at every level of the organization was given to 132 companies. The only other retail brands on this year’s list are Sweden’s H&M and the United Kingdom’s Marks and Spencer.

Washington, D.C. -- Import cargo volume at the nation’s major retail container ports is expected to rise an unusually high 16.9% this month over the same time last year as West Coast ports begin to dig out from a backlog of cargo that built up during just-concluded contract negotiations with dockworkers, according to the monthly Global Port Tracker report released today by the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates.



Brampton, Canada -- Loblaw Companies Ltd., Canada’s largest supermarket chain, will open 50 new stores and renovate 100 existing stores in 2015 as part of a $1.2 billion investment in its business.  

The investment also  e-commerce expansion, and supply chain and IT infrastructure.