Marketing

Canton, Mass. -- Casual Male Retail Group said Monday it has opened a new, 12,663-sq.-ft. Destination XL in Phoenix, which joins five locations in Georgia, Illinois, Texas, Nevada and Tennessee.

The company said it plans to open up to 13 DXL stores during the balance of 2011, another 20-30 stores during 2012 and approximately 100 stores over a four to five year period.

Casual Male also said it is preparing to launch a DXL website, with a multi-channel solution similar to the DXL store experience. 

J.C. Penney marketing chief Mike Boylson is trading the retail game for another type of game entirely: baseball. The 32-year J.C. Penney veteran officially left the company on July 1, and is already hard at work on his next venture: Boylson and a pal are opening a D-Bat baseball and softball training franchise in Allen, Texas, not far from J.C. Penney’s headquarters.

Kudos to Borders for not forgetting its most loyal customers as it begins the slow and painful process of shutting down operations.

NAPERVILLE, Ill. — OfficeMax announced that it will offer customers support education by carrying an extensive selection of Boise brand paper products with the Box Tops for Education seal on the package. OfficeMax retail stores and OfficeMax retail partners are currently the only office super stores to carry Boise's Box Tops for Education products, the company reported.

Walmart is among a group of retailers who further aligned themselves with a key Obama administration initiative this week by committing to open more than 1,500 stores in urban and rural markets defined as food deserts. The initiative is part of the Obama administration’s Let’s Move! campaign designed to address the nation’s weight problem by improving access to fresh foods.

Here are the facts:

• Walmart will open between 275 and 300 stores in food deserts by 2016.

New York City -- Mike Boylson, formerly executive VP and CMO of J.C. Penney, has traded retailing for baseball. The 32-year J.C. Penney veteran, who officially stepped down from the company on July 1, and a friend are opening a franchise of D-Bat, a baseball and softball training academy, Advertising Age reported. The facility is due to open this fall.

SAN FRANCISCO — Gap Inc. announced that Bella Goren, CFO AMR Corp. and American Airlines Inc., has been appointed to the company’s board of directors, effective Aug. 15. She will become the 11th member of the board and will serve on the company’s audit and finance committee.

It is logical that Wal-Mart Stores Inc. president and CEO Mike Duke would top Supermarket News’ Power 50 list of the food industry’s most influential executives. The company sells more food, by a large margin, than anyone else, therefore a case could be made that Duke, or whoever is CEO of Walmart, should top the publication’s list each year.