Strategy

Seattle - REI  (Recreational Equipment, Inc.) will to open a new store in Olympia, Wash. in the spring of 2011. 

The two-story, 25,000 square-foot store will be located off Cooper Point Road at Westfield Capital Shopping Mall. 

“REI looks forward to extending our roots further south in Puget Sound with the new store in Olympia,” said Kevin Golic, REI’s retail director for the Washington Alaska district. 

New York - Dollar General is considering a plan to build a $60 million distribution center in Bessemer that could create up to 650 jobs, the Birmingham Business Journal reported. 

The new facility would be the 10th distribution center for Dollar General (NYSE: DG), according to Tawn Earnest, senior director of corporate communications for the company. The company is seeking incentives from local governments for the project.

Pittsburgh - American Eagle Outfitters on Tuesday detailed its plans to open Eagle Outfitters and Aerie by American Eagle stores in Japan, in partnership with Sumikin Bussan Corporation. The first store is slated to open in Tokyo’s legendary Harajuku shopping district in the first half of 2012.

AEO has signed an exclusive franchise agreement with Sumikin, a leading marketer, importer and exporter with extensive experience in the fashion industry.

Toano, Va. - Lumber Liquidators announced the appointment of Robert M. Lynch as the company's president and COO, with an anticipated start date of Jan. 17, 2011.

NEW YORK - OgilvyAction, the activation arm of Ogilvy & Mather, and Malone Advertising, the retail marketing unit of JWT, both part of WPP Group,have announced a joint venture in North America to form the first fully integrated, end-to-end shopper marketing and experiential marketing agency.

Fortune has released its list of the top 10 Fortune 500 stock performers for 2010, and Dillard's is the lone retailer on the list.

Ranked at number 10, Dillard's, which is ranked at 348 on the Fortune 500, posted a year-to-date stock performance improvement of 97% and a market cap of $2.1 billion.

According to the report, Dillard's sold more merchandise this November than last year, with sales totaling almost $470 million for the month. That marked a 7% increase over last year.

Competition in the toy category is intense every holiday season, but it seems to have been ratcheted up a few notches this year, and Target was one of the companies doing the ratcheting. The company’s aggressive pricing moves put it in close proximity to Walmart early in the season and more recently Target’s toys were less expensive than Walmart’s, according to a pricing survey conducted by Citigroup retail analyst Deb Weinswig.

The time to ponder that question is when everything is going right, which pretty much seems to be the case at Target these days. The company’s stable senior leadership team has articulated a clear strategy that is being well-executed and delivering expectation-exceeding results such as a 5.5% gain in November same-store sales and third quarter earnings per share that surged 28.5% to 74 cents.

Fayetteville, Ark. - A report Monday said that Wal-Mart Stores is preparing to test a small-format store it is calling “Walmart on Campus” at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.

According to the report by Advertising Age, the pilot appears to be part of a series of tests of Walmart’s smaller-format stores.

Atlanta - U.S. regulators have sued a former sales executive at Carter’s Inc., claiming that he caused the company to misstate earnings by hiding the cost of discounts given to a retailer. 

According to a Monday report by the Securities and Exchange Commission, Joseph Elles induced Kohl’s Corp. to boost purchases from Carter’s from 2004 to March 2009 by granting unauthorized discounts that he didn’t disclose.