Sales & Marketing

Surrey, Canada - Guildford Town Centre, a shopping center in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada, is reaching out to customers across multiple channels and points of engagement. The center retained 3 Tier Logic, a wholly-owned subsidiary of 3TL Technologies, to use its Platform3 technologies to drive consumer foot traffic, gather in-depth data about shoppers, and increase social media engagement.  

Easy access to an expanded offering of online inventory is the premise behind Staples Exchange, a marketplace-like concept that allows suppliers to leverage Staples’ online presence.

Staples doesn’t call its new Staples Exchange a marketplace – the term used by Amazon to describe the massive aggregation of third party sellers on its site – but rather and a world-class platform that makes it easy for suppliers to offer products to Staples customers.

Social media is front and center at Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft Stores this holiday season with the retailer tapping into customers’ desire to share with the introduction of the Holiday Hub.

As holiday shoppers hunted for online deals Thanksgiving weekend the Overstock.com Web site provided fertile hunting grounds.

The retailer said its sales between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday increased 23 percent compared to the same period the prior year. In addition to new customers, the increase was driven by an 8 percent increase in average individual order size. Cyber Monday sales increased 24 percent while Thanksgiving day saw the largest gain, up 38 percent off of a smaller initial base than Cyber Monday.

Houston — In its surprise change of leadership, Francesca's Holdings Corp. named Michael W. Barnes as chairman, president and CEO, effective immediately. He joins Fancesca's after serving as CEO of Signet Jewelers since 2011, and leading the company’s $1.46 billion acquisition of Zale Corp. Barnes left the Ohio-based Signet in October, saying he wanted to be closer to his family in Dallas.  

Big Lots hypothetical core customer Jennifer isn’t feeling so cheerful this holiday season as the nation’s leading closeout retailer is eyeing a low single digit fourth quarter comp increase.

Oakville, Canada — The proposed merger between Tim Hortons Inc. and Burger King Worldwide Inc. has been approved by the Minister of Industry under the Investment Canada Act ("ICA"). The companies have set the deadline for registered shareholders of Tim Hortons or Burger King Worldwide to make an election by Dec. 9, with the assumption the proposed merger will occur Dec. 12.

Brisbane, Calif. — It’s been a little while since the last report of a major retail data breach, but that period of tranquility is over. Bebe Stores Inc. has confirmed that a cyberattack “focused on and limited to” data from payment cards swiped in its U.S., Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands stores occured between Nov. 8-26, 2014.