Supply Chain & Merchandising

By Kevin Smith, VP of onshore corporate services for ImpactWeather

According to Forrester Research, weather is the leading cause of business disruptions¹. From commodity demands and supply chain interruptions to community assistance, retailers know the power that severe weather has over their economic profits and losses.

Philadelphia -- Five Below announced the departure of Jeffrey Moore, executive VP merchandising.

"Over the last seven years Jeff has been an integral part of the success of Five Below as he has helped build the world-class merchandising team we have in place. We thank Jeff for his significant contributions to the business and we wish him well as he leaves to spend time with his family," said Tom Vellios, co-founder and CEO of Five Below.
   

Less than a month after former Walmart.com CEO  Joel Anderson joined Five Below as president, the discount retailer’s EVP of merchandising Jeffrey Moore has resigned.

Five Below, which bills itself as the leading retailer of trend-right, high-quality, extreme-value merchandise for pre-teens, teens and beyond, spoke highly of Moore who is leaving to spend time with his family.

Former Amazon operations executive Jeff Helms has joined crowdsourced same-day delivery start-up Deliv as head of delivery operations.

Helms spent three years at Amazon in operations management and productivity improvement roles. Prior to Amazon, he spent four years as a professor of military science at Arkansas State University. The West Point graduate also served in the military.

New York -- Kroger is expanding into new markets and growing its presence in the e-commerce channel with its acquisition of Vitacost.com, a leading online retailer of vitamins and supplements. 

According to the definitive merger agreement, Kroger will purchase all outstanding shares of Vitacost.com for $8 per share in cash, or approximately $280 million.

For the second consecutive year, PepsiCo has named Sunsweet Growers as Hot Fill Co-packer of the Year for exhibiting superior achievements in quality and overall effectiveness across PepsiCo's beverage supply chain.

This marks the fourth time Sunsweet is recognized as Co-Packer of the Year. The three previous awards were for the Yuba City, California, facility in 2007 and 2012 and the Fleetwood, Pennsylvania, facility in 2008.

Austin, Texas - Retailers have barely reached the halfway mark in their journey to omnichannel maturity. According to the results of a new report from Starmount and Retail Systems Research (RSR) that asked retailers to rate themselves on six dimensions of omnichannel maturity, the lowest overall rankings (an average score of 2.7 on a six-point scale) were in omnichannel order and fulfillment capabilities.

In addition, 67% of retailers were “inefficient” or worse at integrating in-store and digital experiences. Other findings include:

Dublin, Calif. — dd’s DISCOUNTS, a division of Ross Stores, will open a new store in downtown Portland on June 28^th in a former Ross Dress for Less location. Counting the new location, dd’s DISCONTS will operate over 140 locations in 13 states. The retailer is on schedule to open approximately 20 locations in 2014.