Sales & Marketing

Walmart CEO Bill Simon was among a group of six senior excutives added to the National Retail Federations board of directors.

Simon will be joined by Beall’s CEO Steve Knopik, J.C. Penney CEO Myron Ullman, Tractor Supply CEO Greg Sandfort, SAP SVP Lori Mitchell-Kell and Utah Retail Merchants Association president Dave Davis.

The retailers were elected to the board Sunday, the opening day of NRF’s 103rd Annual Convention and EXPO. They will serve three-year terms.

New York – Network and application security services provider Cybera, Inc. has reached 20,000 deployments of its payment application defined network (ADN) solution. An AND is an enterprise data network using virtual network and security components to provide a dedicated logical network for each application, with customized security and network policies to meet the requirements of that specific application.

Groupon has expanded its fashion and apparel footprint with its acquisition of Ideeli, a leading online flash fashion retailer, for $43 million in cash.

Ideeli was founded in 2007 and its members number in the millions.

Tysons Corner, Va. -- MicroStrategy Inc. announced that Guess has unveiled a new mobile app for its customers powered by the MicroStrategy Alert Platform.

New York -- RadioShack is enlisting specialty retail industry veteran John W. Feray to help the company execute its turnaround strategy and has appointed him executive VP and CFO, effective Feb. 6.

New York -- Big data discovery and data-sharing solution-provider 1010data said that Claire’s has chosen its cloud-based platform for big data discovery across its global businesses. 1010data allows Claire’s to integrate data from throughout its enterprise and provide a self-service analytical platform for users to derive data-driven insights and receive fast access to business results.

When specialty retail apparel chain Express issued its fourth quarter guidance in early December 2013, it anticipated a promotional holiday season as well as a slowdown in traffic after the Thanksgiving week. What the company encountered, however, was a drop in traffic that was even deeper than expected because consumers waited until much closer to Christmas to shop.

Irvine, Calif. -- Statistics released by The Retail Equation, gathered during the seven days after Christmas, revealed that the Midwest states had the highest rate of returns, when comparing total dollars purchased to total dollars returned and exchanged.