Retail

Richard N. Cabela, co-founder and chairman emeritus of the $3.6 billion chain of 50 Cabela’s stores, has died at his home in Sidney, Neb.

Cabela served as chairman of the board until June 2013, when he transitioned to chairman emeritus and Jim Cabela became chairman. Cabela and his wife, Mary, and brother, Jim, founded Cabela’s in 1961. He is survived by his wife, Mary, and their nine children and their families, as well as two sisters and three brothers.

Kimberly-Clark North America has named Grant LaMontagne as president of customer development. In his new role, LaMontagne will lead all sales and customer development activities for the company’s operations in North America and will report to KCNA group president Michael Hsu.

LaMontagne joins KCNA from Clorox, where he was most recently SVP and GM for Clorox Professional Products business, which includes the health care, janitorial/sanitary and institutional foods channels.

Charlotte, N.C. - Branding and retail marketing agency, Theory House, has named Christopher Durham to the leadership team as VP of retail brands. Durham joins Theory House with more than 20 years of experience developing and managing brands both at the retail level and as a consultant, including work for Office Depot, Best Buy, Food Lion, Hannaford and Lowe’s Home Improvement.

In recent years, retailers have aggressively implemented in-store systems to track customers’ every move from the moment they enter till the moment they leave (hopefully including a trip through a checkout lane). Specific details such as how long customers spend in front of a display are also carefully monitored and analyzed. Technology now allows retailers to keep tabs on what customers do in the store almost as rigorously as they follow customer actions online.

Cupertino, Calif. – Apple opened its first South American store in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on Feb. 15. Brazil is a leading global market for smartphones and media reports indicate more than 1,700 customers attended the opening of the store.

San Francisco -- Wine.com, announced the addition of Peter Elarde as chief marketing officer and Greg Tatem as VP, engineering to the Wine.com executive team.
   
"We're on a roll. Wine.com is profitable, growing, hiring and innovating," said Rich Bergsund, CEO. "Peter and Greg are bringing new energy and talent to our management team, and will be instrumental as we continue building Wine.com into a great company, great brand, and an exciting place to work."

Omnichannel marketers have gained a new personalization weapon to engage with shoppers thanks to a partnership between nGage Labs and Web Decisions.

The firms announced a new arrangement that combines nGage’s personalized mobile customer engagement capabilities with Web Decision’s omnichannel marketing database solutions to create a fully integrated database-drive mobile customer engagement solution.

Irvine, Calif. – Beall’s has selected replenishment and profiling solutions from JustEnough Software Corporation, a provider of demand management solutions for retail, wholesale and direct-to-consumer businesses worldwide.

Beall’s utilizes existing legacy systems, so delivering strong, focused product presentations and excellent in-stocks required a high inventory investment and was very time consuming.