Strategy

The Walmart Foundation’s Colorado State Giving Program has awarded $321,000 to eight Colorado nonprofits that are helping to fund local programs to improve education, women’s economic empowerment, healthy eating and fighting hunger.

The organizations include We Don’t Waste, Lapuente Home, Care and Share, Kids Aid, Project Angel Heart, Women’s Resource Agency, Broadway Assistance Center and Discover Goodwill of Southern and Western Colorado.

Washington, D.C. - Integrating store and online operations is a key focus for retailers as e-commerce capable solutions increasingly supplant traditional POS and mobile technologies. According to a new study conducted by the NRF, Demandware and the University of Arizona that polled more than 200 U.S. and European retail business technology executives, more than one-third (35.8%) of retailers surveyed are considering a single platform to manage interactions and transactions across all channels.

Haier America president and CEO Shariff Kan has stepped down and will be replaced by Adrian Micu, effective Feb. 10, according to the company.

Micu comes to Haier with more than 25 years of executive-level engineering, technology and product development experience within the appliance industry. Most recently, he held the position of VP engineering with Whirlpool Corporation.

Washington, D.C. -- Wal-Mart Stores announced that it has created a $10 million fund to support manufacturing in the United States. In a joint announcement, Kent International, a New Jersey-based bicycle maker and one of the chain’s suppliers, said  that it will move its production from overseas to Clarendon, S.C.

Walmart’s health and wellness president John Agwunobi shared wide-ranging thoughts earlier this week regarding the state of health care in America and ways in which the evolving marketplace is impacting Walmart customers.
 

Dallas -- Approximately 1.1 million debit and credit cards used at Neiman Marcus stores may have been compromised in a security breach last year, according to an update posted on the retailer’s website. To date, Visa, MasterCard and Discover have notified the company that approximately 2,400 unique customer payment cards used at Neiman Marcus and Last Call stores were subsequently used fraudulently.

Minneapolis – The Tile Shop is expanding its presence in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area with a new store in Southlake, Texas. The new 18,615-sq.-ft. Southlake location is The Tile Shop’s third store in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex (including stores in Plano and Dallas), and the company’s fifth store in Texas (Dallas, Plano, Southlake, Austin, San Antonio).

Hudson’s Bay Company plans to launch a new mobile shopping application for both Hudson’s Bay and Lord & Taylor.

HBC is partnering with Pounce, a consumer-facing mobile app, to integrate traditional media with m-commerce, providing customers the opportunity to purchase merchandise displayed in print media using tablets and smartphones.

According to Pounce, it is the only Hudson’s Bay- and Lord & Taylor-approved mobile app that allows customers to instantly buy products seen in print by simply scanning an image.