Store Systems

Plano, Texas -- Pretax restructuring charges related to corporate reorganization and store closures, as well as pretax impairment charges, helped reduce net earnings at Rent-A-Center Inc. 7% to $25.3 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2014 from $27.2 million in the third quarter of the prior year. Revenues grew 2% to $769.5 million from $754.8 million, and same-store sales rose 1.9%.

 

Atlanta -- The Home Depot announced that it has named Marc Powers executive VP, U.S. stores, effective Nov. 1, 2014. He replaces Marvin Ellison, who was recently named president and CEO designee of J.C. Penney Co.  

Amazon is “piloting” holiday pop-up stores this holiday season, with two confirmed locations in San Francisco and Sacramento, along with what may or may not be a permanent space in Manhattan. While theoretically Amazon is going to let the pilots run their course, analyze the results, and then possibly move forward with a rollout of more permanent brick-and-mortar stores, most observers expect the pilot is the first step in an already determined strategy to build a physical presence.  

Veteran Home Deport operations executive Marc Powers has been elevated to the role of EVP of U.S. stores as part of an ongoing leadership transformation.

Few people know Home Depot from the ground up the way Powers does. He began his career with the company in 1986 as an hourly employee and over the course of the past 28 years served as store manager, district manager and regional vice president. He most recently served as SVP of operations for the company’s nearly 2,000 U.S. stores.

New York -- Newmark Grubb Knight Frank’s retail team has been retained by the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority to lead the leasing of Grand Central Terminal.   

With marketers all abuzz about beacons, mobile technology company Swirl Networks said it has created the first programmatic ad exchange for proximity-based in store mobile marketing.
 

New York -- Incidents of smartphone “showrooming”—seeing a product in a store, then buying it online from another retailer using a smartphone—dropped from 37% in the United States last year to 28% in 2014. But “webrooming,” in which consumers buy in a store after researching a purchase online using a smartphone, was reported by an even higher proportion of respondents, 41%.  Those are among the findings of GfK’s 2014 FutureBuy global study of shopping habits and preferences.