Supply Chain & Merchandising

Party City has promoted Gregg A. Melnick to president of Party City Holdings, effective immediately. Party City Holdings is the parent company of the Party City Retail Group and Amscan Inc., among other entities. Most recently, Melnick was president of the Party City Retail Group.  

Dublin, Calif. - Ross Dress for Less will open a new store in the Philadelphia area on Oct. 11. The store is located in Pilgrim Gardens in Drexel Hill.  

This new opening is part of the retailer’s 2014 expansion program, totaling approximately 75 new locations during the year.

The Woodlands, Texas – Conn’s Inc. is considering a sale of the company, as well as splitting up its retail and credit businesses, following a cut in its profit forecasts in its second quarter results. Other options could include reducing the pace of new store openings and returning capital to investors.

Framingham, Mass. -- Staples has been named to the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for the 11th straight year.

The annual Dow Jones Sustainability Indices follows a best-in-class approach, including companies across all industries that outperform their peers in numerous sustainability metrics.

During a keynote at the recent Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco, Tim Theriault, senior VP/CIO of Walgreens, discussed his company’s ongoing efforts at IT innovation. Walgreens has been involved in a number of notable recent innovative technology implementations, but column looks at the underlying strategy that helps ensure the success of those rollouts.

Here are three takeaways other retailers can glean from Walgreens’ innovation strategy:

Conn’s has begun exploring a range of strategic alternatives, including a potential sale, while maintaining the company’s long term strategy is viable.

New York – Coach Inc. has leveraged the MicroStrategy Analytics Platform and MicroStrategy Mobile to produce automated reporting that provides anytime, anywhere visibility down to the store level. Coach has built an interactive mobile application using MicroStrategy Mobile that provides its retail teams with the ability to examine sales trends for any given geography, including at the individual store level, with a swipe or tap on their iPad devices.

New York -- Associated Foods Stores president Robert Sigel announced that Zulema Wiscovitch has joined the company as executive VP and chief administrative officer.