Sales & Marketing

Chesapeake, Va. -- Dollar Tree swung to a loss in its second quarter on higher integration costs related to its acquisition of a formal rival. But its revenue skyrocketed as a result of the merger.

On July 6, Dollar Tree completed its $9 billion acquisition of Family Dollar Inc.

Shoppers at Lowe’s stores in Canada will soon be able to turn their purchases into miles toward air travel.

New York -- Teen fave Nasty Gal is deploying cutting-edge LED technology to show off its on-trend fashions.

The online retailer has opened two brick-and-mortar stores (one in Los Angeles and the other in Santa Monica), and both feature LEDs by Solais Lighting, a division of PowerSecure Lighting and part of PowerSecure International.

The acquisition of Family Dollar in the second quarter led Dollar Tree Inc. to report quarterly sales that were up more than 48% from a year ago.

For the second quarter ended Aug. 1, Dollar Tree reported sales of $3.01 billion, boosted by $811.6 million in sales from Family Dollar. Same store sales rose 2.7%. Dollar Tree reported income of $138.9 million. The retailer’s earnings were 67 cents.

Seattle – Amazon.com is piloting a program that delivers products from farmers markets to consumer tables (or at least their front doors).   

Partnering with farmers market delivery service Fresh Nation LLC, Amazon is delivering individual orders of farmers market goods, as well as prepared gift baskets of fresh fruits and vegetables, to customers in Los Angeles and Orange and San Diego counties in Southern California.

Denver – Another company has joined the constantly expanding ranks of retailers who operate proprietary innovation labs.

Demonstrating that the appeal of innovation labs is moving beyond major chains, specialty online retailer eBags is teaming with Iterate Studio to jointly create a two-part innovation lab.

Washington, D.C. -- Retailers will reveal their 2015 holiday strategies in the weeks ahead and as they do so the National Retail Federation is offering a powerful new resource filled with industry best practices to benchmark against for this year and beyond.

The newly released report, called the 2015 Holiday Planning Playbook, was compiled by top retailers over the course of the past year who served on various NRF councils focused on retail industry disciplines.

Some major retailers are participating in the 30th Retailing Summit conference hosted by The Texas A&M University’s Center for Retailing Studies at Mays Business School.