News

Matthews, N.C. – Howard Levine, CEO of Family Dollar Stores Inc., reportedly plans to sell between one and two million shares of company stock in the next 10 days. According to the Charlotte Business Journal, Levine filed his intention to make the sale with SEC.

Camp Hill, Pa. – Same-store sales rose 4.8% in January 2015 compared to the same month a year earlier at Rite Aid Corp. Front-end same store sales increased 2.9% while same store pharmacy sales, which included negative impact from new generic introductions, increased 5.7%.

Total drugstore sales increased 4.3% to $2.03 billion compared to $1.943billion for the same period the prior year. Prescription sales accounted for 70.3% of drugstore sales.
 

San Luis Obispo – In what could be a preview of Sunday’s Super Bowl performance, Patriots fans have been outselling Seahawks fans overall in the month of January by 258%. According to data from Shopatron, although in total Patriots fans have spent more, individually their Seahawks counterparts have been more zealous, spending an average of 15% more than Patriots fans on each individual order.

Dayton, Ohio – Personalization has become something of a “family value” for marketers. According to the Teradata 2015 Global Data-Driven Marketing Survey, 90 % of marketers say making marketing individualized is a priority.  

They want to move beyond segmentation to true one-to-one personalization in a real-time context. Faster, more accurate decisions are key benefits of using data for nearly two-thirds of respondents.

Other findings include:

San Francisco – Sabrina Simmons has been elected to the board of directors of Williams-Sonoma Inc. Simmons has served as executive VP, CFO of Gap Inc. since January 2008.

Menomonee Falls, Wis. – Kohl’s Department Stores will be the exclusive department store retail partner for The Color Run, a national paint race event series. Select Kohl’s stores will serve as the packet pick-up location in more than 100 cities across the county.

Kohl’s will have a social presence at each race and will encourage participants to take and share celebratory photos with their friends and family across social accounts using #MakeYourMove.

By Scollay Petry, OtherLevels

Top of mind for retailers wanting to better engage with shoppers in their brick-and-mortar locations this holiday season are in-location technologies (e.g. beacons) and the personalization tactics they make possible. According to MediaPost, about 20% of retailers already use iBeacons, while 54% plan to implement the technology by 2015. With the promise of immediacy and “in-store engagement,” others undoubtedly will jump on the beacon bandwagon soon.

A stronger than average flu season helped Rite Aid post an increase in same store sales for January.   The company reported a 4.8% increase in same-store sales for the four weeks ended Jan. 24. Rite Aid's January front-end same-store sales increased 2.9%.  

Neither a surge in online sales nor a rebounding U.S. economy has been enough to lift Ikea, as the global furnishings retailer reported flat profits for 2014.

Ikea, which operates 315 stores in 27 countries, said net profit for its fiscal year through August rose 0.4% from the previous year to $3.76 billion, far slower than the 3% growth the retailer logged last year, and its 8% growth in 2012.

Analysts say the results show that IKEA is sticking to its strategy of lowering prices and broadening its e-commerce offering.

Seven weeks into her new role as chief operating officer of Walmart’s U.S. stores division Judith McKenna shared insights into her priorities for the retailer’s domestic business with a gathering of more than 400 suppliers Friday morning.