Marketing

Katy, Texas - Academy Sports + Outdoors announced a third planned Louisville-area store, in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, scheduled to open in 2015. Academy previously announced stores opening in Louisville and Middletown, which will both open prior to the 2014 holiday season.

All three locations were developed in partnership with GBT Realty Corporation. Academy Sports + Outdoors also announced new multi-year partnerships with both the University of Louisville Cardinals and also the University of Kentucky Wildcats.

Five hundred suppliers, 200 merchants and 800 meetings equaled made in U.S.A. magic for Walmart as the retailer looked to accelerate domestic sourcing with a first ever event dubbed Open Call.

Walmart held the event at its Bentonville, Ark., headquarters on Tuesday, July 8, to discover domestically sourced products from new and existing suppliers that can help the company meet its goal of buying an additional $250 billion in American-made products in the next 10 years.

St. Petersburg, Fla. – HSN Inc. (HSNi) is promoting chief marketing officer Bill Brand to president of HSN, effective immediately. Brand will retain his role as chief marketing officer of HSNi and will continue to report directly to HSNi CEO Mindy Grossman.

Brand is also an executive officer of the company. As president, he will assume responsibility of merchandising, programming, planning and HSN2 in addition to his current responsibilities.

The National Retail Federation (NRF) has hired Paul G. Martino as VP and senior policy counsel, and has promoted Beth Provenzano to VP for federal government relations.

Martino and Provenzano will work with the NRF government relations department and focus on emerging public policy priorities, including data security, payments, mobile and e-commerce, privacy and patent reform.

Dublin, Calif. -- Ross Dress for Less will open three new stores in Indiana on July 19. The stores include Waterford Park South Shopping Center in Clarksville, Shops on Main in Schererville, and Erskine Village in South Bend. 

These new openings are part of the retailer’s 2014 expansion program, totaling approximately 75 new locations during the year. 
 

Off-price department store retailer Gordmans Stores is still without a full-time CEO, but the retailer did just fill two key marketing and e-commerce positions.

The Omaha-based apparel and home decor retailer named Amy Starr Myers to the role of SVP of marketing and Stacey Townsend was named vp and general manager of e-commerce to launch Gordman’s online sales effort.

Dublin, Calif. – Ross Dress for Less will open one new store in Las Vegas and two new stores in Florida on July 19. The new stores are part of the retailer’s 2014 expansion program, totaling approximately 75 new locations during the year.

The Florida stores will be located in Pier Park North in Panama City Beach and Royal Gardens Plaza in Hialeah Garden. They will give Ross a total of 140 stores in Florida.

EnTouch Controls, a provider of cloud-based energy management services, is embarking on an aggressive growth strategy and to that end has appointed William Rickman as its new director of national accounts.

Rickman has more than a decade of experience of selling cloud-based financial services and fraud prevention solutions to the restaurant and retail markets.