Corporate Governance

Off-price retailers have traditionally stayed offline when it comes to conducting actual retail transactions. While most off-price retailers have long operated informational sites where customers can perform tasks such as locating nearby stores and checking prices, it has been very rare for retailers in this space to allow customers to buy goods via the Internet. Until now.

By Chase Cornett, [email protected]

The holiday shopping season is just around the corner and soon consumers will be bombarded with buying guides, floods of emails, deep discounts and, of course, that Black Friday competitive spirit. With all the chaos brought on by the holidays, retailers are finding it harder and harder to stand out. The result — strategies that focus on discounts, deliver low profit margins and drive transactions instead of engaged brand experiences.

Cleveland – Sherwin-Williams is releasing a new consumer app for Google Glass, called ColorSnap Glass. Developed for Sherwin-Williams by digital marketing agency Resource, ColorSnapp Glass provides a digital layer of color samples customers can view using the Google Glass device.

Cincinnati -- Macy’s, Inc. plans to hire seasonal associates for approximately 83,000 positions at its Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s stores, call centers, distribution centers and online fulfillment centers nationwide for the 2013 holiday season. The company’s 2013 seasonal hiring plan will bring on approximately 4% more temporary workers than the 80,000 holiday employees it hired in 2012.

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.

Grapevine, Texas – GameStop plans to hire approximately 17,000 employees nationwide as the company prepares for the upcoming PlayStation 4 and Xbox One console launches, as well as the holiday shopping season.

Hollywood, Calif. – On Sept. 26, 2013, the board of directors of Frederick’s of Hollywood Group Inc. received a non-binding proposal letter from a consortium of HGI Funding LLC, TTG Apparel, LLC, Tokarz Investments, LLC, Fursa Alternative Strategies LLC, and Arsenal Group LLC to acquire all of the outstanding shares of its common stock.

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.

New York -- Fairway Group Holdings Corp., parent company of the Fairway Market grocery chain, has signed a long term lease to open a 52,242-sq.-ft .grocery in Manhattan's TriBeCa neighborhood with commercial realtor Jack Resnick & Sons.

This store is expected to open in fall 2014. It will be the first Fairway location in Lower Manhattan and the 16th Fairway food store in the tri-state New York, New Jersey and Connecticut region.

New York -- Saks Fifth Avenue was able to reach nearly 100% display compliance at its 8th floor shoe department in their flagship New York City store with the TrueVUE Inventory Display Execution application from Tyco Retail Solutions. Using a handheld RFID reader, associates can inventory shoes daily and generate an actionable report of all missing display shoes to replenish.