Sales & Marketing

Fort Worth, Texas -- Trademark Property Co. announced it has been engaged to manage and lease Uptown Village at Cedar Hill, a 610,000-sq.-ft. mixed-use open-air center in Cedar Hill, Texas.

Strategically located in the midst of a dynamic retail hub less than 20 minutes south of downtown Dallas, Uptown Village includes 350,000 sq. ft. of specialty stores and restaurants and 35,000 sq. ft. of office space.

Stamford, Conn. -- General Electric is spinning off its Synchrony Financial consumer credit business in an initial public offering (IPO) and seeking a market valuation as high as $22 billion. Synchrony offers store credit cards for retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and J.C. Penney Co.

Newell Rubbermaid has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Ignite Holdings from North Castle Partners, a leading private equity firm focused on consumer businesses that promote healthy, active and sustainable living.

London -- Natalie Berg, global research director at Planet Retail, commented:

“As a branding expert, Lewis’ first task will be to define Tesco. Philip Clarke himself has admitted that the brand has baggage. It doesn’t stand for value, yet it doesn’t stand for quality, and without a clear proposition we fear that Tesco will continue to lose customers to more relevant and better-defined channels.

San Francisco - Only 1.7% of products are posted on social commerce properties. In addition, according to the Search and Social Commerce Index from predictive media optimization technology Kenshoo and semantic advertising company DataPop, even among products in their most popular product categories, retailers post only 7.2% of their products via social commerce.

Ross Stores is in the process of opening 23 Ross Dress for Less and seven dd's Discounts stores across 17 different states. The new locations are part of the off-price retailer's plans to add a total of 75 Ross and 20 dd's Discounts stores during 2014.

"These latest openings reflect our ongoing expansion strategy to fill in our presence in existing markets while also increasing penetration in our newer Midwest region where we added another eight Ross locations in July,” said Jim Fassio, president and chief development officer.

Bentonville, Ark. – Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has reportedly invested $103 million in its Indian operations with the goals of expanding its wholesale store count and increasing its online presence there. According to the Wall Street Journal, Wal-Mart intends to increase wholesale store base in India from the current 20 to 70 in the next five years.

Menlo Park, Calif. – Facebook is testing a new “buy” button designed to help businesses drive sales through Facebook in News Feed and on Pages. With this feature, people on desktop or mobile can click the “Buy” call-to-action button on ads and page posts to purchase a product directly from a business, without leaving Facebook.