Corporate Governance

Greg Portell, lead partner in the retail practice of global strategy and management consulting firm A.T. Kearney:   

Amazon is staking a claim in the appliance market in a big way in a partnership with Sears Holdings.   The embattled retailer announced it will sell its prized Kenmore-branded appliances on Amazon. The deal opens the way for the broadest distribution to date of Kenmore products outside of Sears stores and its websites. Distribution will be nationwide, and Sears Home Services and Innovel Solutions units will provide delivery, installation, and other services.  

Staples is making a bold move to modernize its supply chain.   The office supplies giant is adding a robotic material handling solution across its network of fulfillment centers. Designed by Great Star Industrial USA, LLC, the automated robotic storage and retrieval system incorporates two types of automated guided vehicles (AGVs) into a unified system that brings both high and low cubic velocity items to a single pick and pack station.  

Sprint is expanding its growing store network in the Pacific Northwest.   The company plans to open 12 new retail locations throughout Washington by the end of 2017. Currently, Sprint operates more than 107 stores throughout the state.   In Oregon, Sprint plans to open nine stores in the Portland Metro area by yearend. The carrier current has more than 64 locations throughout the market.  

Softness in larger product categories and unseasonal weather in the Northeast dampened MarineMax’s third quarter earnings.    For the third quarter ended June 30, MarineMax’s revenues declined to $329.8 million from $345.6 million for the same period last year. This missed Wall Street’s expectations of $383.01 million.  

The rate at which data breaches are hitting and impacting businesses shows no sign of slowing. In fact, according to the Identify Theft Resource Center, the number of breaches so far this year has already surpassed the number of breaches around the same time last year by almost 35%. (Here’s a list of breaches that have already occurred this year.)   

Against all odds, bankrupt RadioShack is still ticking.   An affiliate of Kensington Capital Holdings will acquire RadioShack’s intellectual property after it submitted a $15 million bid, Reuters reported. Kensington is already owned $23 million by the retailer, dating back to a loan it gave the company some two years ago.  

Formula. Format. Familiarity. The retail recipe is tried and true, based on brand dress and standards developed over years and, often, decades. Standards meticulously define everything from the logo to the physical layout of stores. Storefronts, where the visual expression of the brand identity is most evident and most essential, is especially prescriptive. A Barnes & Noble in Miami looks the same as a Barnes & Noble in Minneapolis.