Marketing

A lot of change is taking place at Target these days, but one thing the company isn’t messing with is a generous dividend that has helped sustain the value of the stock price.

The Target board of directors declared a quarterly dividend of 52 cents a share this week, a 21% increase from the 43 cents paid last quarter. Target is among an elite group of companies that has paid a dividend for 188 consecutive quarters since it became publicly held in October 1967.

Amy Heidersbach, who has spent the last four years at eBay overseeing various marketing efforts, including Pay Pal, has joined customer experience management company Needle as SVP, chief marketing officer.

Heidersbach led PayPal’s $12.5 billion enterprise and retail solutions unit while at eBay and also was also on the executive team that founded X.commerce, the online auction house’s ecommerce platform division. Heidersbach brought X.commerce together with ecommerce platform Magento after it was acquired by eBay in 2011.

Outdoor retailer Sportsman’s Warehouse is off to a rough start as a newly minted public company, reporting an 18.1% decline in first quarter same store sales as firearms and ammunition sales evaporated.

Taramac, Fla. — Furniture retailer City Furniture is completing a $17.5 realignment of its South Florida retail network with the opening of a new 34,000-sq.-ft. Ashley Furniture HomeStore in Cutler Bay, Florida. This location is adjacent to a 56,000-sq.-ft. City Furniture showroom that opened in October 2013, creating a 90,000-sq.-ft. superstore.

INDIANAPOLIS — Simon, a leading global retail real estate company, has announced a collaboration with elevate Digital, a developer of interactive digital technology, to install "digital concierge" solutions in a number of Simon's U.S. retail properties.

The interactive displays will provide Simon mall visitors with a virtual way-finding experience to help them navigate the mall, find deals, events, promotions and also take relevant information with them on a mobile device.

Digital business company Acquia launched Acquia Campaign Cloud, offering customers a software as a service that it says is faster and more affordable than similar products like the Adobe Marketing Cloud.

With a single dashboard that’s meant to help manage client campaigns, as well as templates and multichannel delivery opportunities, and the company’s Cloud Site Factory powers the Campaign Cloud. The new service also comes with Acquia Lift and the recently acquired TruCentric, which personalizes experiences with content.

Lululemon founder Chip Wilson has voted against the re-election of Michael Casey and RoAnn Costin to the company’s board of directors.

Wilson founded the company in 1998, and has seen it evolve through many business cycles, expanding it from a small storefront in Vancouver to an international brand with more than 250 stores.

Vancouver, Canada — Lululemon Athletica Inc. founder Chip Wilson announced that he voted against the re-election of Michael Casey and RoAnn Costin to the board of Lululemon Athletica. Wilson, who founded the company in 1998, had been living in Australia and was asked by the company to return and deal with a quality control issue that resulted in a product recall during 2013.