Retail

A lot of retailers are making it easy for customers to shop in store with their mobile phones, but what about those pesky batteries?
 
Neiman Marcus is addressing the often forgotten Achilles heel of mobile commerce – the frustratingly short life of many smartphone batteries. The luxury chain is expanding a partnership with mobile charging station provider ChargeItSpot with a planned nationwide rollout that will result in 37 mobile phone charging stations installed across 30 locations.

Abercrombie & Fitch Co. has named two veteran retailers to head up its divisions.

The teen apparel retailer named Stacia Anderson as president of its namesake brand, and also its abercrombie kids division. Anderson is a 20-year veteran of Target Corp., where she most recently served as senior VP of merchandising.  She will join Abercrombie on June 13.
 

Chain Store Age’s annual search for 10 retail real estate stars under the age of 40 years resulted in this: Ten youthful, creative, hard-charging industry executives.

Some are retailers, others are brokers or from shopping center companies. Three are women. One is under the age of 30. There’s a single Canadian in the bunch. Two work for CBRE. Each has studied the business, sought out mentors, and researched and taken on the issues of the day.

Grocery giant Supervalu Inc. is one step closer to separating its troubled Save-A-Lot banner.
 
Supevalu, which initially announced it was exploring spinning off Save-A-Lot into a standalone, publicly traded company in July 2015, has completed the amendment of an existing $1.5 billion senior secured term loan agreement. This amendment permits the company and its subsidiaries to undertake certain transactions deemed necessary to enable a spinoff of Save-A-Lot.

ModCloth, a San Francisco-based e-commerce retailer focused on vintage and independent apparel styles, has named Nicholas Genest as CTO.
 
Genest joins ModCloth with more than 15 years' experience across consumer, tech and online retail industries. He most recently served as the CTO for the online luxury consignment retailer The RealReal, where he strategically led the development of their mobile, web and data technologies since 2013.

As the retail landscape continues to evolve in response to an explosion of creativity and innovation from both new and existing brands, this is an exciting and inspiring time to be in the business.
 

L Brands subsidiary Victoria’s Secret has named a veteran of the specialty and intimate apparel verticals as its new CEO.

Jan Singer, who served as CEO of Spanx from June 2014 – March 2016, is now CEO of Victoria’s Secret. Previously, she held corporate VP positions at Nike from February 2004 – June 2014.

Wayfair Inc. has appointed Chad Ghosn VP of IT infrastructure and security.

Ghosn will oversee a large engineering team that is responsible for scaling Wayfair’s infrastructure system to meet customer demands and company needs. Before joining the online home furnishings retailer, Ghosn led the infrastructure team at Expedia Inc.

Prior to his role at Expedia, Ghosn spent more than a decade in various infrastructure leadership positions at Dell Inc. Previously, he led network operations for Kaiser Permanente.