Labor & Employment

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.

Los Angeles – A little more than a month after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, specialty women’s apparel retailer Cache is throwing in the towel. Advisory and valuation services provider Great American Group (GA), which won a bid for Cache’s assets at a March 3 bankruptcy auction, has begun "going-out-of-business" sales for all Cache's retail locations in the U.S., the Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico.  

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.

Loblaw is already Canada’s largest retailer and it plans to stay that way by spending more than $1 billion this year on new stores, e-commerce expansion and supply chain improvements.

As Canada's largest network of corporate and independently owned retail stores and formats, each employing between 20 and 300 employees, Loblaw's investment is expected to create more than 20,000 jobs through store staffing and construction.

Salisbury, N.C. – Food Lion will remodel its Raleigh, North Carolina market stores in 2015. The Raleigh market remodels are expected to be completed in stores on a rolling basis between April and October 2015.

Food Lion will continue to launch enhancements for customers across all of its 1,100 stores in 2015, as well as remodels in markets over time. Raleigh is the third market to receive the store remodels. Seventy-six stores in the greater Wilmington and Greenville, North Carolina markets were remodeled in 2014.

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.



Leading outdoor lifestyle retailer Gander Mountain has a new senior merchant to lead hardlines merchandising as it pursues greater growth of firearms and aggressive store expansion.

The operator of 156 stores – 40 of which have opened since 2012 – said Jay Tibbets joined the company as vice president of hardlines merchandising to oversee the sales, procurement and replenishment of all firearms, ammunition, security, hunting supplies and fishing gear.

Aliso Viejo, Calif. - Johnny Rockets has named Charles Bruce as the company's new president and CEO. Bruce brings to Johnny Rockets more than 35 years of experience in marketing and leadership positions, most recently as president and CEO of Peter Piper Pizza,

Earlier in his career, Bruce held marketing and brand strategy positions with the International Pizza Hut Franchise Holders Association as VP of marketing, and at Wendy's as VP of international marketing.