News

Oakville, Canada — The proposed merger between Tim Hortons Inc. and Burger King Worldwide Inc. has been approved by the Minister of Industry under the Investment Canada Act ("ICA"). The companies have set the deadline for registered shareholders of Tim Hortons or Burger King Worldwide to make an election by Dec. 9, with the assumption the proposed merger will occur Dec. 12.

Boilignbrook, Ill. — Ulta Beauty reported fiscal results for the third quarter of fiscal 2014 that looked pretty darned good. Net income rose 30% to $59.1 million compared to $45.4 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2013, with lower expenses helping drive up profit.

The company said it will have opened 100 new stores in all of fiscal 2014 and remodeled another 12.

Goodlettsville, Tenn. — Dollar General Corp. and Dollar Tree engaged in a verbal war on Friday as they both seek to acquire Family Dollar.    In a news release, Dollar Tree said Dollar General's bid "may ultimately fail" because the Federal Trade Commission may require it to sell more than the 1,500 stores the retailer has said it is willing to let go of.  

Buenos Aires, Argentina — Specialty entertainment applicance retailer Musimundo, which operates more than 200 stores in Argentina, deployed its e-commerce platform on the  IBM Cloud to meet increased customer demand on Cyber Monday.

As it prepared for Cyber Monday 2014, Musimundo's greatest challenge was to address the number of entries of people to its website per second, and it needed to manage load balance and security levels in accordance with regulatory requirements.

Adam Kujawa, head of Malware Intelligence at Malwarebytes Labs, research arm of the anti-malware company: “It looks like the payment systems for (Bebe’s) U.S. stores were attacked, meaning that most likely they were all using the same software/hardware that had the same vulnerability. Unfortunately, without additional technical explanations, exactly what was vulnerable on those systems will remain a secret and we can only hope that the same vulnerability isn’t going to be used against another retailer.”

If you talk to retail industry stakeholders about their business priorities for 2015, you will likely hear about their continued focus on omnichannel. But the overall environment is starting to feel different than in years past. Words like “transformation” and “action” are being used to recap the 2014 business landscape. We’re moving past defining omnichannel and now focusing on implementation.

Newtown Square, Penn. – Omnichannel is increasing the reach retailers have to their customers, but also increasing customer expectations. According to a survey of marketing decision-makers in omnichannel consumer products organizations from SAP, 86% of respondents agree that omnichannel has meant that customer and consumer expectations of the organization have increased.  

San Francisco — Shopping activity increased slightly from October in November 2014, but slumped compared to November of the previous year. Monthly retail benchmarks from in-store analytics provider Euclid reveal that  traffic lagged significantly throughout the month, with Black Friday also failing to match the previous year as deals were more distributed across time and channels.   

Framingham, Mass. — Staples Inc. has long prided itself on making things for customers. Now the retailer is trying to do the same for suppliers with Staples Exchange, a unified platform that allows vendors to sell through all of Staples’ e-commerce channels, with multiple integration options. Staples does not require vendors to use a third party that charges integration fees, instead giving them a single portal to enroll with all of Staples’ sites.
 

Pittsburgh — American Eagle Outfitters’ profit fell 63% in the third quarter, to $9.03 million from $24.9 million in the year-ago period. The drop was partially driven by costs related to a restructuring program that includes closing underperforming stores and reducing headquarters headcount.