Sales & Marketing

Everybody loves a turnaround story. RadioShack is betting that the now-former president of daily living products and solutions for Walgreens, Joe Magnacca, will help author a turnaround story of its own for the small-box consumer electronics retailer.

A first of its kind social shopper event is coming to Walmart’s home town in May courtesy of new media company Collective Bias.

The event, called SoFabCon, will be held May 3-5 and is the first annual gathering of the proprietary Collective Bias community of shopping influencers known as Social Fabric. Event organizers expect 200 members of the Social Fabric blogger community to participate with a collective sphere of influence that touches 40 million people.

San Francisco -- Levi Strauss & Co reported Thursday that net income for the quarter ended Nov. 25 rose to $53 million, from $44 million in the year-ago period.

Revenue slid 3% to $1.3 billion, hurt by slowed sales in Asia.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Fred's Super Dollar on Thursday reported sales for the five-weeks ended Feb. 2 were up 31% to $173.6 million. Comparable-store sales were up 28.6%. 

On an adjusted basis, which eliminates the one week ended Feb. 2, sales were up 2% and same-store sales were flat, Fred's added. 

New York -- Although there were some surprising gains among retailers in January, for the most part results were expectedly mixed, as consumers took a hit on their take-home pay from higher payroll taxes but cooler weather gave a boost to others.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Social marketing platform Kenshoo Social said Wednesday that it has completed an integrated Facebook marketing campaign for Zappos and cloud-based social marketing platform, Shoutlet.

During a two-month test on a single-brand page, Zappos’ Facebook posts generated approximately 85,000 visits to its website. The traffic produced an average order value on par with its paid search and social marketing programs and achieved an average conversion rate of 1.75%.

New York -- There were few missteps among the discounters in January, as most posted strong results, many surpassing Wall Street expectations.

Target reported a same-store sales rise of 3.1%, topping Wall Street expectations. Total sales surged 29.6% to $5.97 billion in January.

HOFFMAN ESTATES, Ill. — Sears is headed to the Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival this month to showcase its new lines of outdoor living furniture, patio sets and Kenmore grills.