eCommerce

Chicago -- Englewood Construction has announced that the firm’s Retail Group recently completed work on the nation’s first Spanx store, and also completed the first American Girl store in the Florida market.

At Tyson’s Corner Center in McLean, Va., just outside of Washington D.C., Spanx opened its first retail location in the U.S.

New York -- Mobile devices will play a pivotal role this Thanksgiving as the holiday transforms into "Mobile Thursday," the day before Black Friday, according to a new online survey by Harris Interactive, conducted on behalf of Digitas, a digitally led, global integrated brand agency.

Walmart has taken heat for violating some unwritten retail rule about not opening on Thanksgiving, but on Thursday it extended a benefit that many employees will find appealing.

Walmart has long offered employees a 10% discount on general merchandise, which is pretty hefty considering prices are already low. That discount is in place all year and then in December employees could also save 10% on food.

Bentonville, Ark. -- Wal-Mart Stores Inc. on Thursday filed an unfair labor practice charge against the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, requesting that the National Labor Relations Board halt alleged unlawful attempts to disrupt Wal-Mart’s business.

Wal-Mart spokesman David Tovar told Reuters that the retailer cannot allow the UFCW to “continue to intentionally seek to create an environment that could directly and adversely impact our customers and associates. If they do, they will be held accountable,” he said.

New York -- Private equity firm Apax Partners said Friday that it will acquire Cole Haan from Nike for $570 million in cash.  

Cole Haan sells through 108 domestic stores, 68 international stores, online and through department stores. It has been a part of Nike since 1988.

To effect the acquisition, Apax is partnering with Jack Boys, who led the revitalization of Converse.

The transaction is expected to close in early 2013.

Austin, Texas -- Online coupon site RetailMeNot.com on Friday released its second annual Black Friday edition of the Shoppers Trend Report, which showed that 71% of holiday shoppers plan to spend “about the same” or “more” than they spent last year versus 63% who said "about the same" or "more" in 2011.

Canton, Mass. -- Casual Male Retail Group reported Friday a loss of $1.6 million in the third quarter, flat with the prior year’s third quarter.

Sales dipped slightly to $88.7 million from $89 million, and same-store sales inched up 1.5%. However, same-store sales for Destination XL rose 13.8% in the quarter.
    

New York -- Wal-Mart Stores reported in a regulatory filing that its investigation into violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a federal antibribery law, has extended beyond Mexico to China, India and Brazil.  

A 2.9% third quarter same store sales increase and the sale of its credit card business pushed Target’s third quarter profit up 17.6% to 96 cents a share.

Total sales increased 3.4% to $16.6 billion in third quarter due to the 2.9% comp increase and the benefit of a net increase of 18 stores compared to the prior year. Target ended the period with 1,781 stores and was up against a challenging prior year comparison when comps advanced 4.3%.

City of Industry, Calif. -- Hot Topic Inc. reported Wednesday that profit for the third quarter jumped 38% to $4.3 million, from $3.1 million in the year-ago quarter.

Revenue edged up 2% to $179.4 million from $175.8 million, missing Wall Street’s expected $182.9 million in revenue.

Same-store sales rose a slight 0.2%.