Retail

Downers Grove, Ill. – The board of directors of FTD Companies, Inc. has appointed Michael Silverstein as a director of the company, effective Jan. 21, 2014. Silverstein will serve as a class I director with a term expiring at the company's 2014 annual meeting of stockholders.

New York – Hedge fund Litespeed Management has purchased about 8.1 million shares, or an 8.1% stake, in RadioShack. Litespeed, founded by Jamie Zimmerman in 2000, specializes in investing in troubled companies that have viable businesses.

Litespeed disclosed the purchase in an SEC filing. The filing does not specify purchase price, but analysts have estimated the company probably did not spend more than roughly $17 million on the investment.

The Walmart Foundation’s Colorado State Giving Program has awarded $321,000 to eight Colorado nonprofits that are helping to fund local programs to improve education, women’s economic empowerment, healthy eating and fighting hunger.

The organizations include We Don’t Waste, Lapuente Home, Care and Share, Kids Aid, Project Angel Heart, Women’s Resource Agency, Broadway Assistance Center and Discover Goodwill of Southern and Western Colorado.

Washington, D.C. - Integrating store and online operations is a key focus for retailers as e-commerce capable solutions increasingly supplant traditional POS and mobile technologies. According to a new study conducted by the NRF, Demandware and the University of Arizona that polled more than 200 U.S. and European retail business technology executives, more than one-third (35.8%) of retailers surveyed are considering a single platform to manage interactions and transactions across all channels.

Haier America president and CEO Shariff Kan has stepped down and will be replaced by Adrian Micu, effective Feb. 10, according to the company.

Micu comes to Haier with more than 25 years of executive-level engineering, technology and product development experience within the appliance industry. Most recently, he held the position of VP engineering with Whirlpool Corporation.

Washington, D.C. -- Wal-Mart Stores announced that it has created a $10 million fund to support manufacturing in the United States. In a joint announcement, Kent International, a New Jersey-based bicycle maker and one of the chain’s suppliers, said  that it will move its production from overseas to Clarendon, S.C.

Walmart’s health and wellness president John Agwunobi shared wide-ranging thoughts earlier this week regarding the state of health care in America and ways in which the evolving marketplace is impacting Walmart customers.
 

Dallas -- Approximately 1.1 million debit and credit cards used at Neiman Marcus stores may have been compromised in a security breach last year, according to an update posted on the retailer’s website. To date, Visa, MasterCard and Discover have notified the company that approximately 2,400 unique customer payment cards used at Neiman Marcus and Last Call stores were subsequently used fraudulently.