Sales & Marketing

Flower is the name of a new proprietary cosmetics line developed by Walmart in conjunction with Drew Barrymore and cosmetics manufacturer Maesa.

The new brand is positioned as offering department store quality at mass market prices and consists of 181 products in the eye, face, lip and nail categories with prices ranging from $4.98 to $13.98.

New York -- Monday launched with heavily attended keynote addresses at the National Retail Federation’s 102nd BIG Show at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City.
    
Former United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan shared his views about the state of world politics, joined by moderator and Macy’s CEO Terry Lundgren, who also is the outgoing chairman of the NRF.
    

New York -- Wal-Mart Stores is set to announce in a Tuesday address at the NRF convention in New York City that it is prepared to hire more than 100,000 veterans over the next five years.

The pledge will come as part of U.S. CEO Bill Simon’s Tuesday keynote address at the 102nd annual BIG Show.

The hiring pledge will begin on Memorial Day, and applies to veterans within 12 months of leaving active duty. Most of the jobs will be in Wal-Mart's stores or its Sam's club locations. Some will be in the company's distribution centers.

NEW YORK — Despite caution among consumers, retailers wrapped up 2012 with a healthy holiday shopping season, according to a new report by a retailing trade group.

The National Retail Federation said that holiday retail sales increased 3% over the year before, to $579.8 billion. December retail sales increased 0.8% seasonally adjusted from November and 2.1% unadjusted year over year. Nevertheless, the 3% increase was still below the NRF's projected 4.1% growth. Meanwhile, nonstore holiday sales grew 11.1%.

St. Petersburg, Fla. -- HSN announced a complete re-launch of the company's digital channels - elevating the customer experience by making the retailer's platforms faster, more efficient, and even more social. The re-launch is part of a comprehensive, multi-platform digital redesign that has been in development for more than a year. It enhances the customer experience, not just on the top 10 most trafficked e-commerce site HSN.com, but across all mobile devices, including tablets, android and Windows 8.

AUSTIN, Texas — Mozido, a cloud-based, white-label integrated platform of mobile payments, commerce and marketing, has appointed former senior CorFire executives Steve Bacastow and Charlie Wiggs to its management team.

Mozido enables companies in retail, financial services, consumer packaged goods and telecom to serve consumers, small businesses and global corporate brands with and without bank accounts. Its platform complemented by real-time customer behavior analytics.

New York -- Shoppers diversifying the way they shop for and acquire goods, becoming increasingly open to buying both online and in-store depending on their needs at time of purchase. While more than 80% of shoppers chose the store to make their last non-grocery purchase, only half are committed to returning there next time they buy. These are among the findings of a new IBM study of global consumers.

NEW YORK — Dell has unveiled its first end-to-end cloud solution which enables retailers to seamlessly move to an in-store cloud environment.