Sales & Marketing

eBags.com, a leading online retailer of bags and accessories, has launched a Back-to-School Bag Finder, which filters more than 5,000 backpacks to help shoppers find “the perfect bag for school.”

Shoppers can choose from 100 brands, including JanSport, Dakine, Herschel, and The North Face, and filter by bag type, color or customer opinion.

Sidney, Neb. -- Cabela’s Incorporated announced today plans to open a store in Calgary, Alberta. Construction is scheduled to begin later this year, with a fall 2015 opening.

The 70,000-sq.-ft. store will be located adjacent the Deerfoot Mall, which is currently under plan review as an open air shopping center redevelopment project.

It will be Cabela’s third location in Alberta, joining two locations in Edmonton, which opened in 2011 and May of this year.

San Jose, Calif. – RetailNext Inc., a provider of Big Data analysis solutions for physical retail, has completed $30 million in growth financing. The company drew strategic investments from Qualcomm Inc. through its venture investment group Qualcomm Ventures, Tyco and American Express.

Nokia Growth Partners (NGP) led the round which included new investor Activant Capital Group and existing shareholders August Capital, StarVest Partners and Commerce Ventures. The financing brings the total capital raised by RetailNext to $59 million.

Sears and Kmart are expanding free store pickup to more than 2,000 locations. The online/in-store collaboration will allow customers to pick up sears.com or kmart.com orders at any Sears or Kmart store and orders will be ready in five minutes or less.

St. Petersburg, Fla. – HSN Inc. (HSNi) is promoting chief marketing officer Bill Brand to president of HSN, effective immediately. Brand will retain his role as chief marketing officer of HSNi and will continue to report directly to HSNi CEO Mindy Grossman.

Brand is also an executive officer of the company. As president, he will assume responsibility of merchandising, programming, planning and HSN2 in addition to his current responsibilities.

Free Standing Insert (FSI) coupon activity increased 3.4% based on Coupons Dropped during the first six months of 2014 versus the same time period in 2013, according to Marx, a Kantar Media solution.

FSI Coupons Dropped within non-food categories increased 8.2% to represent 65% of the 158 billion FSI coupons distributed during this period.

Atlanta – Following Staples’ expansion of its Staples Connect home and office automation platform to 500 stores, The Home Depot is making Wink-enabled connected home products available for purchase in its nearly 2,000 U.S. stores and online.

There have been more than a few headline-grabbing leadership transitions in the retail world recently. And, to be honest, “transitions” might be too gentle of a euphemism: some big names from some big-name brands have left, been fired, forced out, voted off the board, or otherwise pressured to step down in the last few months.