Sales & Marketing

Cleveland -- Shopping ranks as a favorite activity among nearly half of all teens and young adults aged 13 to 24, according to a new survey by Forest City in partnership with Alexander Babbage. Shopping at malls ranked above a virtual shopping experience among the entire group, with the 13-to-17-year-old age group showing the strongest preference for a bricks-and-mortar shopping experience.

Sales at Tractor Supply’s 1,331 stores topped $1.5 billion during the first quarter but decelerating comp store growth and cool spring weather weighed on profit growth.

Sales at the nation’s largest rural lifestyle retailer increased 8.8% to $1.58 billion from $1.46 billion while same store sales advanced 1.9% on top of a prior year gain of 7.2%. Profits during the company’s second quarter ended June 28 increased 8% to $133.4 million, or 95 cents a share, compared to $123.6 million, or 87 cents a share.

Atlanta - Card.com, a provider of mobile prepaid debit cards, is partnering with IDology, a vendor of technology solutions that verify an individual’s identity and deter fraud anywhere in the payments value chain. Card.com has integrated IDology’s real-time, on demand identity verification and fraud prevention solution into their Customer Identification Program (CIP) process in order to improve their customer approval cycle, streamlining customer onboarding while also preventing fraud.

A $500,000 grant from the Sam’s Club Giving Program will help fund an innovative program to provide technical assistance to small child care operators in low income communities.

Seattle – Starbucks is opening three new stores in Hanoi, Vietnam. The stores will add to Starbucks’ established Vietnam presence of eight stores in Ho Chi Minh City.

Starbucks opened the first of the three stores on July 23. All three will be located near shopping malls or office buildings. Starbucks is not publicly saying how many stores in Vietnam it ultimately plans to open. The company first entered the Vietnamese market in 2013.

Timberland has elevated Stewart Whitney to brand president, effective Oct. 5. Whitney, who has led Timberland’s growth in the Asia Pacific region since 2008, will report to Patrik Frisk, who has held the position since the brand’s 2011 acquisition by VF Corporation and was promoted to coalition president, Outdoor Americas for VF, in April.

By Tyler Roye, Co-founder and CEO, eGifter

The National Retail Federation has joined the growing chorus of voices expecting a surge in consumer spending during the next five months to compensate for a weak start to the year.