Retail

Nashville, Tenn. -- Kirkland's announced  that Todd Weier, senior VP of logistics, plans to leave the company.

"I believe that it is the right time for my departure and that my mission in the company has been largely accomplished," said Todd Weier. "I am proud of our team's many achievements over the years and the logistics infrastructure we've established."

New York - Eminence Capital, LLC, which owns 4.9% of the common stock of Jos. A. Bank Clothiers, has sent a letter to the board of directors criticizing their announced acquisition of Eddie Bauer. According to the letter, signed by Eminence CEO Ricky Sandler, the nearly $900 million acquisition is a poor decision that has an excessive price which almost surely destroys shareholder value.

Ace Hardware’s unique value proposition allowed it to withstand strong competition from Home Depot and Lowe’s in 2013 and grow annual sales by a 8.2% to a record $4.2 billion.

“We outperformed our operating plan, exceeding $4 billion in consolidated revenues and $100 million in net income for the first time in our history,” said president and CEO John Venhuizen.

Net income was $104.5 million for fiscal 2013, an increase of $22.7 million, or 27.8%, compared with $81.8 million in fiscal 2012.

New York -- President Barack Obama visited Safeway Inc.’s distribution center in Upper Marlboro, Md., where he spotlighted the chain’s efforts to improve truck efficiency and called for new fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas standards for medium-duty and heavy-duty trucks by March 2016. The new standards will mean “thousands of dollars in savings every year” for truck operators, Obama said.

Tampa, Fla. — BurgerMonger has taken a 2,700-sq.-ft. lease at Northwood Commons shopping center in Clearwater, Fla. This will be the restaurants fifth location, according to Florida Retail Partners www.floridaretailpartners, an X Team partner and co-broker representing BurgerMonger on the transaction. National Real Estate Ventures was the other co-broker.

When the new BurgerMonger opens in April, the fast casual restaurant will have four locations in the Tampa Bay metropolitan area and one in Willow Grove, Pa.

Understanding threats and taking advantage of opportunities is the name of the game in retail, and pricing intelligence provider 360pi has launched a new suite of tools that does exactly that.

360pi has launched 360insights, a suite of integrated visualizations and dashboard reports that gives retailers visibility into how they can immediately increase revenues and margins through adjustments to their pricing and product mixes.

Delia’s is still in the early stages of its turnaround efforts, but losses in the fourth quarter prompted the multichannel retailer that caters to teenage girls to offer preliminary results.

The company said that headwinds which continue to pressure the retail industry hampered its progress in the quarter.

New York -- nGage Labs and Web Decisions have entered into an 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.