Retail

New York -- Walgreens’ net zero energy store in Evanston, Ill., was selected as Sustainable Store of the Year in Chain Store Age’s 32nd annual Retail Store of the Year design competition. The store, designed and built to produce energy equal to or greater than it consumes, will be highlighted during a special session at Chain Store Age’s 50th annual SPECS conference, March 9 -12, in Grapevine, Texas.

VERO BEACH, Fla. -- Boston Barricade Company and Premier Barricades announced the completion of its merger, effective January 1, 2014, resulting in the largest provider of sustainable modular construction barricades in North America.

Hoffman Estates, Ill. -- Sears Holdings announced that Norman Miller will join the company as senior VP and president, Automotive. Miller, who most recently served as president and COO of Dollar Financial Corp., will be responsible for the oversight and leadership of the company's automotive business, including Sears Auto Centers.

Minneapolis – John J. Mulligan, CFO and executive VP of Target, is publicly calling for U.S. businesses to adopt chip-enabled smartcards. In a column published in the Congressional blog of political site The Hill, Mulligan said the attack on Target exposed the sophistication of today’s hackers and that the retailer had already been striving toward adopting chip-enabled smartcards, used in most of the rest of the world, before the holiday 2013 data breach.

Digital BrandWorks has introduced a new diagnostic tool that lets product suppliers grade the representation of their products online and then develop strategies to optimize their presence.

Grand Forks, N.D. - Acme Tools is revamping its online customer experience by launching its redesigned e-commerce website with IBM WebSphere Commerce and BlueSky Technology Partners. The new acmetools.com has new features and functionality that deliver a significantly improved customer experience for easy online shopping.

J.C. Penney scored its first positive quarterly sales result since 2011, reporting a same-store sales increase of 2% in the fourth quarter, which included the holiday season.

Canton, Mass. - Dunkin' Brands Group, the parent company of Dunkin' Donuts and Baskin-Robbins, opened more than 50 non-traditional U.S. locations in 2013, at airports and other mass transportation terminals, casinos and resorts, military bases, and colleges and universities around the country.  

Dunkin' Brands currently has more than 600 non-traditional locations in the U.S.