Supply Chain & Merchandising

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — HSN has named Anne Martin-Vachon chief merchandising officer, effective May 14. Martin-Vachon will oversee HSN's merchandising and planning teams and report directly to Mindy Grossman, CEO of HSNi.

Austin, Texas -- Cencor Realty Services said that Jeff Nebrat has been promoted to senior VP and head of asset and property management for Cencor Realty Services’ Austin office.

Nebrat, who has been with the company for 14 years, now oversees all asset and property management operations of the 2.8 million-sq.-ft. portfolio of properties operated by Cencor in Austin. His property management duties involve leading the day-to-day operations of a portfolio that encompasses 40 retail centers with more than 500 tenants.

By Vivek Venugopalan, Blog.wipro.com/tag/vivekv

Los Altos, Calif. -- Survey results released Thursday by catalog shopping app Catalog Spree showed that 89.8% of American shoppers would prefer to receive their catalogs digitally and would opt out of the paper versions if they could receive a digital copy instead.

The survey also revealed that more than half (55.1%) of respondents would prefer all of their catalogs in digital form. Today, some 19 billion catalogs are mailed in the United States each year.

LONDON — The break-even forecast for the U.S. division of Tesco has been pushed back to early next year, the U.K. retail giant announced in its fiscal-year results.

Chattanooga, Tenn. -- CBL & Associates Properties announced it has acquired interests in The Outlet Shoppes at El Paso in El Paso, Texas, and The Outlet Shoppes at Gettysburg in Gettysburg, Pa.

The operating outlet centers are owned and managed by Horizon Group Properties and its affiliates.
 
CBL has acquired a 75% interest in The Outlet Shoppes at El Paso and a 50% interest in The Outlet Shoppes at Gettysburg, for a total investment of $108.7 million.

Chicago -- Supermarket retailer Giant Eagle said Thursday it has completed a rollout of Galleria's Promotional Display Optimization solution that allows the grocer to generate thousands of store-specific display plans on a daily basis.

"We were already developing end-cap planograms, but Galleria enabled us to complete the process more efficiently," said Dan Schnorr, senior director of retail space planning, Giant Eagle.  

Walmart and other retailers have fought unsuccessfully for years to level the e-commerce playing field in the United States by requiring Amazon.com and other online-only merchants to collect sales tax. Doing so would eliminate the Internet pure play retailers’ most significant competitive advantage, and for a glimpse of just how significant that would be, look no further than Canada.