Supply Chain & Merchandising

Boston – Online home furnishings retailer Wayfair Inc. launches its initial public offering (IPO) today. The online home furnishings retailer is offering 11 million shares of common stock at $29 per share, which is above Wall Street projections.

The share offering includes 10.5 million shares of Wayfair stock and 500,000 shares from selling stockholders. Wayfair will not receive any proceeds from the selling stockholder shares, meaning the company should raise about $304.5 million in the IPO.

Scandit, a developer of software-based barcode scanning technology for smartphones, tablets and wearable devices, has released an integrated suite of mobile apps that aims to enhance the consumer shopping experience and retail operations.

Scandit’s Mobile App Suite for Retail provides a series of fully customizable, cross-platform mobile applications for retail employees and customers including: Clienteling, Mobile Point of Sale (mPOS), Mobile Shopping (mShopping), Self-Checkout, Shopping Lists and Procurement.
 

San Bernardino, Calif. -- Stater Bros. Markets received the “Best Emissions Rate” Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) GreenChill Partnership for having the lowest corporate-wide refrigerant emissions rate of all the GreenChill partners in 2013. There are approximately 8,000 GreenChill partner stores throughout the nation.
 

Christopher & Banks is preparing to roll out its new missy-petite-women (MPW) store concept at 37 stores, after successfully testing the retail strategy at 20 locations across the US last year. The retailer plans to convert a total of 190 stores by the end of this year.

Dublin, Calif. - Ross Dress for Less will open two new stores in Hawaii on Oct. 10. The stores are located in Kukui Grove Center in Lihue, on the island of Kauai, and the Kahala Mall in Honolulu, on the island of Oahu.  

These new openings are part of the retailer’s 2014 expansion program, totaling approximately 75 new locations during the year.

Camp Hill, Pa. - For the four weeks ended Sept. 27, 2014, same store sales increased 5.1% from the prior-year period at Rite Aid Corp. September front-end same store sales increased 2.3%, while pharmacy same-store sales increased 6.3% and same-store prescription count grew 4.4%.

Total drugstore sales for the four-week period increased 4.5% to $2.02 billion, compared to $1.935 billion.

Boston – Drizly, a technology company powering beer, wine and liquor delivery for consumers across the U.S., has launched Drizly.com, its new e-commerce website. Drizly.com serves as an extension of the Drizly smartphone apps for iPhone and Android, which allow consumers to have beer, wine and liquor delivered in 20-40 minutes, using a network of retail delivery partners.

Home Depot is extending its e-commerce capabilities westward with the opening of a dedicated online fulfillment center in California.

Located in Perris, California, the 858,953-sq.-ft. facility will initially employ approximately 150 people, and eventually employ up to 300. It is one of three new DFCs opening across the US in addition to the company’s existing network.

The Locust Grove DFC opened outside of Atlanta, Georgia in February and the Ohio DFC is scheduled to open next year.