Corporate Governance

New York -- Starbucks Coffee Company and Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) on Thursday unveiled the first-ever Starbucks store on a train. The train’s maiden voyage will take place on the train line running from Geneva Airport to St. Gallen in Switzerland on Nov. 21 at 6:36 a.m.

By Stephen Springham, senior retail analyst at Planet Retail

Three quarters of results and a hat-trick of disappointments — Walmart U.S. again failed to achieve its guidance of flat comps in Q3, reporting a decline of 0.3%. This was not entirely unexpected as an already fragile consumer environment has not been helped by the government shutdown.

Warrendale, Pa. -- Rue21 on Thursday celebrated the opening of its 1,000th store. Located in the Enid Crossing Shopping Center in Enid, Okla., the location is one of the company's new rueGuy format stores and features an expanded assortment of young men's apparel and accessories in addition to the girls' apparel, jewelry, footwear and beauty product.

Orlando, Fla. -- Puma is improving the performance and reducing operational cost of its retail stores by giving district managers access to custom payroll and labor reports on a daily basis.

Toronto -- To help increase profitability, Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) launched a promotion optimization initiative in Canada to improve the ROI of its flyers, or newspaper ads. HBC worked with Saferock to develop the solution, which uses sophisticated analytics to analyze millions of records each week.

Chicago – Online retailers are divided about the impact of the proposed Marketplace Fairness Act (MFA) legislation, largely based on company size. According to a new McGladley LLP survey of decision-makers at small and mid-sized online retailers, 38% of small and mid-sized online retailers with revenues between $10 million and $1 billion project that the MFA would have a negative impact on their profitability.

Walnut Creek, Calif. -- Retailers appear to be putting in the foundational elements to create a coordinated focus on the customer experience. The percentage of respondents to a new survey from RSR Research reporting that Marketing is the primary owner of customer data internally nearly doubled from 2012 to 2013, from 33% to 61%, and those reporting no explicit owner fell from 33% to 17%.

New York – HSN is launching an integrated marketing partnership with Spanish-language media company Univision Communications that will offer a fully integrated experience for U.S. Hispanic consumers.

City of Commerce, Calif. – 99 Cents Only Stores opens two new stores in California on Nov. 21. The stores will be located in the towns of Menifee and Corona.

The Menifee store will measure 18,000 sq. ft., while the Corona store will measure 19,400 sq. ft. 99 Cents Only Stores currently operates 335 extreme value retail stores consisting of 241 stores in California, 44 in Texas, 33 in Arizona, and 17 in Nevada.

Little Rock, Ark. – Dillard’s reported moderate growth in net income and sales during the third quarter of fiscal 2013. Compared to the same period a year earlier, net income increased 5% to $50.9 million from $48.5 million, while net sales climbed about 1% to $1.51 billion from $1.49 billion.