Events

Business and friendship are generally considered incompatible. It’s hard to take the dispassionate, profits-first mindset that traditionally governs business transactions with a person you think of as a friend. However, in this burgeoning age of social media and social commerce, retailers need to make friends with their customers to maximize engagement, loyalty and profits.

WHITE PLAINS — Burlington Coat Factory is joining the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Light the Night campaign for the 12th consecutive year. The retailer will be collecting donations at checkout to help support blood cancer research. 

Burlington Coat Factory also plans to enlist its more than 28,000 employees nationwide to participate in Light the Night walks across the country to commemorate lives touched by cancer and raise funds to help fight blood cancers.

Fort Worth, Texas -- RadioShack Corp. has announced the appointment of Merianne Roth to the new post of VP – communications. She will manage the company’s corporate communications, community relations, internal communications and event marketing.

Roth comes to RadioShack from the Fort Worth Convention and Visitors Bureau, where she served as VP, marketing and communications. Her experience includes marketing and communications posts with J.C. Penney and Pier 1 Imports.

MISSISSAUGA, Ontario — For the second year in a row, Walmart Canada is holding its Great Big Toy Testing Event, which not only gets parents and their children into stores, but also showcases toys for the 2013 holiday season in a real-world holiday wish list catalog setting. 

The Von Maur department store chain was founded 140 years ago and less than a month from now the company will open its 27th store in Coralville, Iowa.
 
The 80,000-sq.-ft. freestanding store will be located at the Iowa River Landing retail development and feature the company’s signature exterior entrance and resident ambience.

Chicago -- Online grocer Peapod is taking its “virtual grocery store” concept on the road in a new promotional campaign. The company unveiled the concept at commuter rail stations in Chicago and the Northeast less than a year ago,

Peapod, a division of Ahold USA, will field trucks installed with digital billboards of grocery aisles at community recreation centers, coffee sleeves at local cafes, concert venues and other places.  

FREMONT, Calif. — Men’s Wearhouse is looking to find new homes for used men’s and women's business attire, including suits, and in the process, looking to generate foot traffic to its stores. 

The company has launched its sixth annual National Suit Drive and has set a goal to collect 150,000 gently used professional clothing items through July 31, to donate to unemployed men and women who are trying to re-enter the workforce. 

WASHINGTON — Lowe’s and the USO treated hundreds of servicemen and women and their families to an all-American event headlined by a charity grill-off at Nationals Park to thank the U.S. armed forces and celebrate the Fourth of July. 

Active-duty troops from each branch of the armed services grilled up burgers for the grilling competition.