Sales & Marketing

Online home and housewares retailer Wayfair.com is prepared to go public and has some of the biggest names on Wall Street lined up to sell its shares.

Wayfair.com, one of world’s largest online destinations for home furnishings and décor items, has grown sales rapidly in recently years, but true to form with other aspiring online retailers, its losses have increased as its spends more on marketing.

Social media is slowly but surely moving from a promotional channel to a channel for direct transactions, as evidenced by the recent news that Facebook is testing a “buy” button of its own. Twitter has become a favored means of running time- and location-sensitive retail promotions, such as Twitter-based food truck promotions run by Ben & Jerry’s and Taco Bell, but so far has not presented itself as an effective means of exchanging goods for currency.

Kansas City, Kansas -- Designer outlet center Legends Outlets Kansas City announced that SweetFrog, a premium frozen yogurt chain based in Richmond, Virginia, has officially opened its first area location. The newest store is part of an expansion plan that adds to an existing 325-plus locations in the United States and abroad.

ECRM compared retail circular advertising in July 2013 versus July 2014 and noted trends occurring across top retail chains. The start of the back-to-school season saw large decreases in these metrics for both Staples and Walmart across the board. Walmart continued its trend of smaller, less dense, highly-targeted and themed circulars. It barely touched on BTS on the front pages of its July 2013 circulars, with only a small laptop ad and some apparel promotions. 2014 saw a more concentrated effort as early as 7/13, prominently featuring notebooks, glue sticks, and crayons.

New York -- Activist hedge fund Jana Partners revealed on Monday that it received an anonymous package detailing a PetSmart presentation around improving results over the next two quarters.

According to Jana in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, a cover letter accompanied the presentation, saying that PetSmart had “missed internal projections.” Jana said it sent the documents back to the company, asking the board to “promptly release such materials after redacting any such competitively sensitive information.”

Nielsen, a leading global provider of information and insights into what consumers watch and buy, has appointed John Lewis as global president and Karen Fichuk as president, North America. Both executive leaders are based in Schaumburg, Illinois.

Washington, D.C. -- The National Retail Federation on Monday told the U.S. Supreme Court that the debate over debit card swipe fees is “of staggering importance” and asked the justices to review a ruling that left the Federal Reserve’s cap on the billions of transactions conducted each year at 21 cents rather than reducing it to a lower level.


The Quest for Texas Best competition is a project of H-E-B Primo Picks, a two-year old statewide program that aims to find the best food and beverage products that Texas has to offer.

Judges whittled nearly 600 submissions from across the Lone Star State to 25 finalists. Submissions came from 128 towns across the state, yielding a mix of jams, jellies, spices and meats. Entries spanned 74 categories including beer, butter, cookies and milk, muffins, Mexican pastries, pickles, sauces and teas.