Lowe's

Photo: Vidya Jwala   Overstock.com has nabbed a Walmart VP.   The online retailer named Vidya Jwala as senior VP of demand fulfillment, responsible for overseeing the e-commerce leader’s sourcing, merchandising, supply chain and customer-care businesses.   Jwala joins Overstock from Walmart, where, as VP of merchandising and operations, he focused on merchandising planning, category management, pricing and costing.  

Retailers will be excited by the prospect of employees that are never late and don’t need to take breaks or even be paid, but will customers accept them?
 

Retailers will be excited by the prospect of employees that are never late and don’t need to take breaks or even be paid, but will customers accept them?
 

Academy Sports + Outdoors named Thomas "Tom" Lamb executive VP, chief marketing officer, effective May 23.

Tom, 50, joins Academy after 17 years with Lowe's Companies, where he most recently served as chief marketing officer. At Lowe's he led the marketing, advertising, brand management, private brand development, customer relationship management, and digital communication activities for the $59 billion retailer.

The retail industry has reached a point of progress with robotics where it is not enough to look at how robots will drive business transformation, but at how they are already doing so.
 
Following are three key retail areas where robots have already begun to make their presence felt:
 
Fulfillment and Distribution

Lowe's Companies Inc. is pricing a $3.3 billion notes offering, with an eye toward supporting a planned purchase of another home improvement retailer.

The retailer has agreed to sell $250 million of floating rate notes due 2019, $350 million of 1.15% notes due 2019, $1.35 billion of 2.5% notes due 2026 and $1.35 billion of 3.7% notes due 2046.

Market Track compared retail circular advertising in March 2016 vs. March 2015 and noted trends occurring across top retail chains.

Lowe’s Home Improvement had denser March print circulars with twice the ads per page and nearly 80 additional ads per drop. Lowe’s shifted the Spring Black Friday sale to the 3/31 drop; up from first week of May 2015.

Home depot did not counter this shift through print, but promoted Spring Black Friday on their website.

Lowe’s Companies Inc. is expanding its use of augmented and virtual reality to help customers truly “visualize” home improvement projects.

Houston -- Thor Equities announced Lowe’s Companies will build a 100,000-sq.-ft. home improvement store at The Shoppes at Cinco Ranch located in Katy, Texas. The company is in the process of developing the 35-acre property, which will include retail stores and restaurant spaces. The property is anchored by Walgreens, with Kroger and Academy Sports + Outdoors located across the street.

Lumber Liquidators on Monday announced the appointment of Dennis Knowles as COO, effective March 1, 2016.

Knowles has served in store operations leadership roles at Lowe's Companies since 2001, most recently as chief store operations officer, and prior to that as senior VP of store operations support and specialty sales and its senior VP of store operations for Lowe's West and South Central Divisions, respectively.