Mass Merchant

Minneapolis – Target Corp. enjoyed many digital returns during the 2014 holiday season, as the retailer broke seasonal digital sales records. Target.com sales on the all-important Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping days were up 40% from 2013.

Hers may not be a household name among Walmart suppliers, but few of the retailer’s executives have as much of an impact on the daily lives of trading partners as Suja Chandrasekaran.

As Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Walmart, Chandrasekaran leads the technology and data transformation underway at Walmart that is referred to as Retail Link 2.0. The information sharing system known as Retail Link was pioneered by Walmart more than two decades ago and today is used extensively by suppliers for all manner of supply chain applications.

Philadelphia -- Teen value retailer Five Below has named Michael Romanko as its executive VP of merchandising, charged with overseeing merchandising strategy and operations. Romanko, who officially assumes the role on Jan. 19, will report to president Joel Anderson.

It was a happy holiday from a sales standpoint at Steinmart with the company reporting a 5.8 percent same store sales increase for December.

The 5.8 percent comp increase for the December period ended Jan. 3 follows a 4.8 percent gain in November and a 4.5 percent increase during the prior December.

Michael Romanko was named Executive Vice President of Merchandising at discount retailer Five Below, reporting to President Joel Anderson.

Matthews, N.C. – Higher sales of discounted, low-margin items did not necessarily add up to a happy holiday season for Family Dollar Stores Inc. The company missed Wall Street expectations for both net income and net sales during the first quarter of fiscal 2015, even as Dollar Tree and Family Dollar both continue making preparations for a multi-billion-dollar takeover this year.

New York – Retail mall vacancies slightly rose in the fourth quarter of 2014, from 7.9% in the prior quarter to 8%. According to real estate research firm Reis Inc., the closure of 200-plus Sears stores during the year drove the increase, the first recorded since the third quarter of 2011.

Chicago -- Nearly a quarter (21%) of consumers said that they are likely to return or exchange at least one of the presents that they received this holiday season. Additionally, male respondents expressed a greater interest in returning or exchanging gifts (30%) than female respondents (20%) by as much as 10%. That’s according to a survey by Retale, a location-based mobile platform connecting shoppers with their local retailers