Sales & Marketing

Atlanta - Buxton is launching its Market Share solution for U.S. retailers. Executives in the retail, restaurant and grocery industries can compare their market share performance to that of an aggregated peer group, giving them insights into how their business is performing to others in their market or industry.

New York -- Amazon has opened a Wearable Technology store on its website, which it describes as a one-stop shop where customers can discover the latest in wearable technology and research wearable devices including activity trackers, smart watches and wearable cameras.

Mountain View, Calif. - Airtight Networks, which provides in-store WiFi analytics such as how long customers stay and shop, how often they come in and marketing campaign effectiveness, is partnering with Frontera Consulting to package social media and retail intelligence capabilities with the Airtight platform. The new solution offers WiFi-based brand lifecycle management.

The Container Store’s net income soared by about 800% year-over-year during the fourth quarter of fiscal 2013, to $18.34 million from $2.09 million. A substantial drop in effective tax rate, as well as lower net interest expense, helped drive the impressive growth in net income.

Net sales slipped from $217.02 million to $216.82 million, while same-store sales climbed 1.4%. The company cited severe weather as reducing sales.

Deerfield Park, Ill. - Walgreens is launching the 2014 Walgreens Way to Well Health Tour with AARP. For six years, Walgreens and AARP have conducted the community outreach program dedicated to providing free preventive and early detection health services to communities across the country.

Lowe's and Porch.com have expanded their strategic partnership to the more than 1,700 Lowe's home improvement stores across the U.S.

Every Lowe's store in the country now features Porch as the in-store resource to help homeowners find the right home improvement professionals for nearly any project outside of Lowe's current installation services. In addition, home improvement service professionals can sign up for a free Porch profile to help increase the exposure of their business to homeowners in need of their specific services.

Waban, Mass. – Grocery chain H.E.B. tied with the banking business of financial services provider USAA for the top spot in consumer forgiveness. Based on a study of 10,000 U.S consumers, the two companies both came in first in the 2014 Temkin Forgiveness Ratings, which rates 268 companies across 19 industries.

Although bad weather hurt some retailers during the crucial fourth quarter, it didn’t stop Michaels Stores from seeing comparable store sales increase 4.6% for the period ended Feb. 1.

Comparable store sales were driven by a 4.2% increase in the company's average ticket and a 0.5% increase in transactions, partially offset by a 10 basis point impact from deferred custom framing revenue.  

Net sales increased 2% to $1.55 billion from $1.52 billion during the quarter, which had a 53rd week that generated an estimated $66 million in net sales.