Supply Chain & Merchandising

Amazon is on track to acquire the 75% of the French package-delivery company Colis Privé that it doesn’t already own during the first quartet, according to the Seattle Times. Some analysts believe it’s only the beginning of a move by the Internet giant to eventually launch a package-delivery service that will one day compete with UPS, FedEx and others. [Seattle Times]

The Bon-Ton Stores says its holiday sales were negatively affected by unseasonably warm weather in November.

The company announced that its same-store sales for the nine-week holiday period ended Jan. 2 decreased 1.6%. Total sales for the combined months of November and December were $784.4 million, a decrease of 1.5% from sales of $796.4 million in the prior year nine-week holiday period.

Kneaders Bakery & Café has partnered with Buxton to support its growth initiatives as it expands into new markets.

Buxton will identify franchise territory opportunities for the Utah-based Kneaders based on customer analytics.

The downsizing continues at Sears Holding Corp.

The troubled retailer is closing what it described as a “very small percentage” of its overall number of Kmart and Sears stores across the country.

"Every year we evaluate our store portfolio and make changes based on leases or stores with poor performance," company spokesman Howard Riefs said in a Reuters report.

The exact number of stores to be shuttered has not been disclosed. But Reifs also said Kmart would account for the majority of the closures.

The Vitamin Shoppe is changing the structure of its board of directors as it looks to enhance its corporate governance practices.

The company announced its board will rotate the role of lead director for the second time since the company's Oct. 28, 2009, initial public offering. David Edwab, who served as lead director since April 2011, has stepped down from that role and John Bowlin, who became a member of the Vitamin Shoppe board in October 2014, will now serve as lead director.

Supervalu wants to unlock the value of its Save-A-Lot division with a planned spinoff, but the 1,336 store division did little to enhance its appeal to investors with a weak showing in the third quarter.

Dick’s Sporting Goods is applying advanced analytics to better understand what products it should sell, and at what cost.

Dick’s is partnering with predictive analytics solutions provider First Insight, to help make faster and more accurate decisions in the areas of product design, merchandise buying and pricing decisions on thousands of goods and designs.

QVC chief information officer Linda Dillman has joined the board of the GS1 US supply chain information standard organization.

GS1 US is a supply chain information standards organization.

Dillman will help guide the GS1 US strategy for driving the adoption and usage of the GS1 System of Standards in e-commerce. The standards uniquely identify products, services and locations globally. They are designed to assist in enhancing the consumer shopping experience while boosting online retailer efficiency, revenue and loyalty.