Discount Store

Every week, retailers unleash significant advertising and promotion efforts in the perpetual competition to engage shoppers, drive trips and grow sales. Annual retail sales and market share are the result of the competition that played out in the preceding 52 individual weeks, and many companies highly value “winning the week.” But some weeks can be much more competitive than others, creating challenges for retailers also facing strong pressures to be efficient and limit costs.

Longtime financial executive and former Walmart U.S. CFO Michael Fung is helping discounter 99 Cents Only modernize inventory systems that have resulted in a series of accounting issues.

Fung, 62, retired from Walmart in early 2012, but was called back into service this past January by the private equity owners of 99 Cents Only. Fung was named interim chief administrative officer at the company to oversee finance, information technology and real estate. In addition, 99 Cents Only board member and former Food Lion president and CEO Richard Anicetti was named interim CEO.

MINNEAPOLIS — Target Corp. has appointed former senator and secretary of the interior Kenneth Salazar to its board of directors. He replaces Mary Dillon, who resigned from the board last month after being named CEO of Ulta Beauty.

Salazar, who recently began working for the law firm WilmerHale, served as a Democratic member of the Senate from Colorado from 2005 to 2009 and as interior secretary under the Obama administration from 2009 until earlier this year, when he was replaced by Sally Jewell. 

Meriden, Conn. – Vestis Retail Group, parent company of Bob’s Stores and Eastern Mountain Sports (EMS), has named James Petty as CEO effective July 8, 2013. Petty most recently served as president of retail stores for Cartier Inc. from 2007 to December 2012 and left the company after it relocated its retail group headquarters from Connecticut to Georgia. He also previously held executive positions at Limited Too and Gap Inc.

Peru tends to be a logical new market for many Chilean retailers and Walmart will be next, according to unconfirmed reports from a company executive who spoke to Reuters.

The news agency this week said Walmart, which is already one of the leading retailers in Chile, will begin work this year to open stores in Peru and plans to form a local management team. As expected, Walmart denied the report but did acknowledge it planned to run a quality assurance office in Peru for procuring products.

Having past the calendar’s mid-point, we thought it would be interesting to take a look at the most viewed stories of the year to date on ChainStoreAge.com. (Based on the results,  the ongoing saga of J.C. Penney remains the industry's biggest story.) Here are the Top 10 stories of the first six months:

Plano, Texas -- J.C. Penney became the latest retail chain to say it will stop selling products associated with celebrity chef Paula Deen following her admission she has made racially derogatory remarks.

In addition, Ballantine Books has ended an agreement with her to publish five books. That agreement included "Paula Deen's New Testament: 250 Favorite Recipes, All Lightened Up,” which was scheduled for release in October 2013 and had reached number one in presales on Amazon.com and the Barnes and Noble website.

Birmingham, Ala. -- Bayer Properties will lease and manage Southlake Mall in Morrow, Ga. Macy’s and Sears anchor the 1 million-sq.-ft. enclosed regional mall. Enclosed malls now represent 30% of Bayer’s operating portfolio.

Bayer has also announced the following new leases: