Retail

Jo-Ann has promoted Riddianne Kline to EVP, marketing and merchandising, and Tom Williams to EVP, operations and human resources. James Kerr, EVP, CFO, completes the executive leadership team reporting to CEO and president Travis Smith.

Shoppers still love Apple products, as evidenced by record unit sales for the iPhone and iPad.
Apple sales increased 5.7% to $57.6 billion from $54.5 billion during the company’s first quarter ended December 28 thanks to record sales of its flagship products.

The company sold a record 51 million iPhones compared to 47.8 million last year and iPad sales increased to 26 million units from 22.9 million last year. The biggest percentage gain came from the Mac business where units sold increased to 4.8 million from 4.1 million.

Retailer assumptions that displaying faces, large text and the word “free” on their websites will draw customer attention may not be correct. Recent analysis from an eye-tracking study by neuroscience artificial intelligence technology provider EyeQuant shows all three of these assumptions are less true than many retailers think.

Target and international pop star Shakira are teaming up to release an exclusive deluxe edition of her latest album, “Shakira.” It’s Target’s first major artist collaboration of the year.

The exclusive deluxe edition will include three bonus tracks and is available for pre-order now at Target.com.

“There were three special songs I recorded for ‘Shakira’ that I decided to save for the version of the album available only at Target,” explained Shakira.

Hudson's Bay Company has appointed Douglas Scovanner as EVP of finance and accounting, on an interim basis. Scovanner will support acting CFO with the day-to-day stewardship of the company’s financial planning, asset protection and accounting functions.

Prior to this appointment, Scovanner spent nearly two decades at Target, most recently as EVP and CFO.

Revelations of job cuts at leading retailers, the latest involving Sam’s Club, are a reminder that pro-active expense control remains retailers' best friend when it comes to ensuring profitability when faced with a murky outlook for consumer spending.

Sam’s Club on Friday became the latest retailer to disclose plans to eliminate 2,300 hourly and middle management positions. The move was characterized as a rebalancing of resources, according to Sam’s Club spokesman Bill Durling. Other retailers such as Macy’s and Target also recently announced job cuts.

RadioShack is set to debut a new advertising campaign in early February with the tag line, “do it together,” which is reminiscent of a long-running campaign that worked well for Lowe’s.

Michaels may have been the victim of an attack on its data, but it wasn’t going to wait to find out the way Target and Neiman Marcus did before warning customers.

In a statement laced with the word, “may,” Michaels said it recently learned of possible fraudulent activity on some U.S. payment cards that had been used at its stores, which it said suggested the company may have experienced a data security attack.