Sales & Marketing

Indianapolis — Kite Realty Group has leased a 31,541-sq.-ft. location in El Paso’s Sunland Towne Center.

Kite Realty and RJL Realty Advisors represented the landlord, KRG Sunland. Venture Commercial represented Sprout’s.

New York -- Walmart’s Silccon Valley hub, called @WalmartLabs, announced on Wednesday it has acquired Torbit, a cloud-based website acceleration company.

Walmart described Torbit as a “front-end optimization innovator that has been focused on making the web a faster and better place.” Torbit is known for developing measurement, analytics and performance improvement tools to help companies identify and enhance their overall site performance.

Naperville, Ill. – OfficeMax Inc. is promoting Deb O’Connor, senior VP of finance and chief administrative officer, to interim CFO. She will replace Bruce Besanko, executive VP and CFO, who will leave the company to become the executive VP and CFO of Supervalu Inc. His last day at OfficeMax will be Aug. 6. A five-year veteran of OfficeMax, O'Connor previously served as senior VP and controller of the ServiceMaster Company.

PLANO, Texas — Unseasonably cold and wet weather and cautious consumer spending negatively impacted business at Dr Pepper Snapple Group, which reported second quarter 2013 net sales of $1.61 billion, a 1% decrease from $1.62 for the same period last year. 

Reported income from operations for the quarter was $285 million, including $7 million of unrealized commodity mark-to-market losses. Reported income from operations was $300 million in the prior year period, including $6 million of unrealized commodity mark-to-market losses.

Brampton, Ontario -- Loblaw Companies Limited reported higher earnings and revenue in the second quarter of fiscal 2013 as compared to the same period in fiscal 2012. Lolbaw’s net earnings for the quarter totaled USD $173.2 million, up 14% from $151.8 million.

The retailer reported revenues of $7.31 billion, a 2% increase from $7.18 billion a year earlier. Same-store sales improved 1.1%.

Flooring specialist Lumber Liquidators reported a 14.9% second quarter same store sales increase and became the latest company to benefit from a resurgent housing and home improvement market.

Lumber Liquidators, operator of 300 stores, said total sales increased 22.2% to $257.1 million from $210.3 million during the second quarter ended June 30. Gross margins expanded to 41.3% from 37.3%, reflective of a reduced sourcing costs, higher prices and improved operational efficiencies, which translated to significant profit growth. Net income surged 67.7% to $20.4 million.

IRVING, Texas — Holiday shifts adversely affected quarter-to-date performance at Michaels Stores, which reported net sales of $631 million for the nine-week period ending July 6, a decrease of 0.1% from $631.8 million for the comparable period last fiscal year. 

Same-store sales for the same fiscal period declined 2.7%. The company's quarter-to-date performance was also adversely affected by the timing of media activity due to the impact of the 53rd week in fiscal 2012. However, as a result of the shifts, the company has seen improvement in July sales performance.

Pittsburgh — GNC Holdings has announced that it is expanding its retail presence in China with the opening of its first stand-alone store in Shanghai. GNC plans to open an additional 25 locations in China over the next 12 months.

The company currently operates more than 60 store-within-a-store locations in eight grocery, convenience and health and wellness chains in China.