Retail

Best Buy Canada is now offering Gibson’s guitars and basses from Gibson USA and Epiphone, both online and in select stores across Canada. This launch adds to the ever-growing selection of more than 300 musical instruments available online at bestbuy.ca.

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) organization’s CEO Summit is winding down in Bali, Indonesia and Walmart Asia CEO Scott Price used the event as a platform to share progress the company has made on a variety of fronts.

Price, who serves as chairman of the National Center for APEC, was among a roster of high level business executive and global political leaders to attend the event which ran from October 1-8. Notably absent was U.S. President Barack Obama who had canceled his visit at the last minute due to the U.S. government shutdown.

Deerfield, Ill. -- Walgreens announced it is launching a full suite of integrated financial services, Balance Financial, in phases over the coming months. The services are all built around the chain’s new Balance  Financial Prepaid MasterCard.

Balance Financial is currently offered to customers of more than 250 Walgreens locations in Detroit, Milwaukee, and Nashville, with a nationwide card rollout expected before year end and additional financial services in 2014.

New York -- Shoppers in the United States intend to spend an average of $646 on gifts this holiday season, representing an 11% increase over the $582 they planned to spend, on average, in 2012, according to Accenture’s annual holiday shopping survey. The forecast uptick is more optimistic than other holiday surveys released to date.

Purchase, N.Y. -- Beyond the Rack, Currys, lastminute.com, Newegg and PC World have gone live on MasterPass, the digital platform from Master Card. More than 20,000 leading retailers in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia are now on the platform, according to Master Card.

Global ecommerce and payment processing leader First Data Corporation and Microsoft to simplify retailers ability to offer and redeem local deal offers.

The companies said that First Data’s OfferWise solution has been integrated with Microsoft’s Bing Offers Card-Linked which consolidates local deals from a number of deal providers. OfferWise is an open platform that enables retailers to electronically attach offers to any consumer payment card or mobile wallet to allow streamlined and automatic redemption of the offer at the point of sale.

Washington, D.C. -- Despite concerns over the government shutdown, import volume at the nation’s major retail container ports is expected to grow 9.1% in October over the same month last year, according to the monthly Global Port Tracker report released Monday by the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates. The numbers reflect merchandise ordered months before the shutdown as retailers planned for the holiday season.


Wilmington, N.C. -- National mobility equipment franchisor 101 Mobility is seeking to attract potential franchisees in the Kansas City, Mo., market. 101 Mobility has introduced geo-specific online advertising combined with SEO-rich organic content to reach potential Kansas City franchise candidates.

101 Mobility currently has 29 franchisees operating physical and online stores in 70 territories.