Mass Merchant

Bentonville, Ark. -- Wal-Mart Stores disclosed in an email Friday that its China senior VP operations has left the company.

According to a Friday report by Bloomberg, Shawn Gray has left the company, but no reason for the departure has yet been given.
 

New York City -- Leonard Green & Partners and CVC Capital Partners said Friday they are making a joint buyout bid worth an undisclosed amount for BJ's Wholesale Club. The two private equity firms revealed their plans in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Friday. The bid price was not disclosed.

In February, BJ's announced it was exploring a sale. In March, Leonard Green is already the chain's larger shareholder, with a 9.3% stake.

TOPEKA, Kan. — Matthew Rubel is stepping down as CEO of Collective Brands, the company announced Thursday. Rubel will also give up his role as chairman of the board and as a director for the company. Michael Massey has been named the interim CEO and Scott Olivet has been named the company's non-executive chairman.

SCARSDALE, N.Y. — Natural food retailer Mrs. Green's Natural Market confirmed its acquisition of seven Superfresh grocery locations in Maryland and one Superfresh location in Washington, D.C., from the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Co.

CHICAGO — The private-label trend at retail continues to gain steam as Supervalu CEO Craig Herkert shared plans last month at its annual shareholders meeting to expand Supervalu's private-label program now through February 2012.

Walmart Canada president and CEO David Cheesewright is scheduled to speak next week at the Jefferies 2011 Global Consumer Conference near Boston. Walmart doesn’t typically push country presidents on stage at investor conferences except at its own analysts’ meetings when it has hosted events overseas in such places as China earlier this year or prior years in Brazil and the United Kingdom. However there are some interesting things going on in Canada these days, and the Jefferies event is an opportunity for Walmart to showcase some of its management talent.

Walmart is moving forward with what could be characterized as a roll out of its Neighborhood Market format nearly 13 years after the first unit opened in the fall of 1998. Just don’t call it a Neighborhood Market.

This sounds like a pretty cool deal. Walmart’s wholly-owned video-on-demand subsidiary Vudu and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment in an exclusive arrangement this week offered a new type of digital move card for the science fiction film, Battle: Los Angeles.

The cards cost $14.96 and went on sale the same day as the Blu-ray and DVDs. The big difference between buying the physical Blu-ray disc or DVD is customers who purchase the card simply enter a code to access the film directly from a computer or more than 300 different Vudu-enabled consumer electronics devices.

Walmart may have been slow to embrace the online space in the mid 90’s when dot-com fever first heated up, but it isn’t making the same mistake the second time around as the digital world undergoes the mobile and social revolution.

Walmart executive were said to be among a group of major retailers who met with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday to discuss the elimination of the city’s “food deserts,” essentially areas where roughly 450,000 residents don’t have convenient access to fresh food.

According to an AP report, representatives from Walmart, Walgreen, Aldi and three other chains who were not identified met with Emanuel who reportedly showed a detailed map of the city’s food deserts and made an appeal for projects in specific areas.