Marketing

Bentonville, Ark.

New York City -- Microsoft on Thursday opened a store in Bellevue, Wash., close to its headquarters in Redmond.

It is the company’s seventh store to date, but more expected, according to the Wall Street Journal. The company expects a “pretty aggressive roll-out schedule” of new stores next year, the report said.

Atlanta -- SRS Real Estate Partners said that Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Pei Wei Asian Diner has selected SRS to find its debut location in the state of Georgia.

Pei Wei was launched in July 2000 as a growth vehicle for P.F. Chang’s China Bistro. Currently, Pei Wei operates more than 165 company-owned stores in 20 states.
 

By Julius C. Dorsey Jr., [email protected] and Roy T. Bergold Jr.[email protected]

Aside from maybe the eccentric billionaire who on a whim decides to open a shop to sell hand-whittled tumbleweed sculptures, probably not many. For the rest of the owners and managers in the real world, sales and profits are the only reasons they’re in business.

San Francisco -- Gap will open its first Italian flagship on  Saturday in the Corso Vittorio Emanuele shopping district of Milan.

The company said that it also plans to open an additional Gap store in Rome next year and a Banana Republic store adjacent to its Milan location "in the near future." The Milan Gap store spans three floors and 25,500 sq. ft. and will offer all Gap clothing collections.