Strategy

Oklahoma City - Homeland Stores, a 78-store regional supermarket chain headquartered in Oklahoma City, has successfully completed of a mobile payments pilot program with mobile payments technology provider DoubleBeam. Launched in June of this year, Homeland's SwiftScan mobile application allows customers to pay for purchases with a smartphone.

SwiftScan is currently accepted for payment at 20 Homeland locations, with plans to add 26 more locations by the end of October.

Ending years of speculation, the Container Store late Monday filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public stock offering.

The operator of 62 stores in 22 states with annual sales of $702 million contends the U.S. can support as many as 300 locations with international growth also a possibility. The company expects to open six stores during the current fiscal year and seven stores next year. The company’s stores average around 19,000-sq.-ft. and carry approximately 10,500 items grouped in 16 departments.

Washington, D.C. - The National Retail Federation (NRF) today announced the development of a new Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council to serve as an advertising and marketing voice for the retail industry. The organization’s Retail Advertising and Marketing Association (RAMA) will transition into the newly created council.

OfficeMax EVP and chief digital officer Jim Barr has been elected to Shop.org’s board of directors for a two-year term.

Shop.org, the digital arm of the National Retail Federation, is the world's leading community for digital retail, offering thought leadership through original research and gold standard events. The community's exclusive networking groups and committees lead the global conversation surrounding innovative e-commerce trends and digital retail.

Davenport, Iowa -- Von Maur Department Stores will open its 29th store at Riverchase Galleria Mall in Hoover, Ala., on Nov. 2. Located just outside of Birmingham, Ala., the three-level, 185,000-sq.-ft. store will be the company's first location in Alabama and will become one of Von Maur's largest stores in the country.

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Macy’s has announced plans to hire 83,000 seasonal employees at its Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s stores, call centers, distribution centers and online fulfillment centers nationwide for the 2013 holiday season, representing a 3.8% increase from last year’s 80,000 seasonal hires. 

New York -- Holiday sales will rise 3.4% sales increase, slightly stronger than last year, for the traditional November-December holiday period, even though retailers are expecting a more modest spending season, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers.

Additionally, ICSC anticipates that the other two measures of U.S. industry holiday sales will both increase over last year.