News

By A.J. Clark, Thermopylae

Nordstrom Inc. has become the first retailer to launch the Like2Buy platform, which allows Nordstrom.com customers to directly purchase items featured on the retailer’s Instagram page. The commerce-enablement of visually oriented social platforms, such as Instagram, Pinterest and Vine, is an inevitable development as social media becomes more focused on photos and videos and less on text. The preference most Millennials have for visually oriented social media reinforces the value that commerce enabling these platforms has for retailers.

The Family Dollar board is under new pressure to walk away from a deal with Dollar Tree after Dollar General further increased an already more generous counter offer.

Early Monday Dollar General increased its all cash offer to $80 a share from $78.50 a share and increased the number of stores it said it would be willing to divest to 1,500 from 700. The company also said it would be willing to pay Family Dollar a $500 million reverse break-up if the deal failed to secure antitrust clearance.

RetailMeNot, a provider of digital offers, has unveiled an upgraded, redesigned app for iPhone and Android phones.

Broad-line retailer Alco’s shareholders have replaced the company’s board of directors with seven new members, effective immediately. The elections were made at the company’s annual meeting of stockholders in Dallas late last week.

Green Innovations has promoted its VP of sales Jeff Thurgood to CEO

Thurgood has 30 years of industry experience including 16 years with Kimberly-Clark, where he served in the corporate headquarters as national merchandising manager of Huggies Baby Wipes, Depend and Poise Adult Care brands, and as trade marketing director of Target Brands.

Thurgood succeeds Philip Rundle who will serve as a consultant to the company through year-end. According to the company, Rundle is resigning as CEO and member of the board because of a family health matter.

Improved sales in Pacific Sunwear’s men’s division helped bolster the company’s earnings for the second quarter ended Aug. 2.

The company reported earnings of $7.5 million for the quarter, compared to a net loss of $19.2 million in the year-ago period. Comparable store sales inched up 0.3%.

Revenue for the quarter was a better-than-expected $211.7 million, up from $210.1 million last year.

Fred’s second-quarter results reflected the company’s strategic decision to build its business model for the future as a convenience/pharmacy-centric store, driven by data-based inventory management, according to CEO Bruce Efird.

The company reported a net loss of $16.4 million for the quarter. Fred's total sales for the second quarter of fiscal 2014 increased 2% to $491.2 million. On a comparable-store basis, second-quarter sales decreased 0.1%.

Profitero, a leading global provider of online insights and e-commerce intelligence for retailers and brands, has added Morrisons to its list of clients.
 
Profitero will provide competitor market data to Morrisons via its Price Intelligence solution, enabling the supermarket to match online shoppers’ favorites from their usual list of purchases at another supermarket. With one click, online shoppers can import their shopping lists into the Morrisons’ website.

Latina Style magazine last week named Walmart, Target, CVS Caremark and the Army & Air Force Exchange Service four of the 50 best companies for Latinas to work for.
 
Walmart ranked No. 10 on the list, Target No. 36, CVS Caremark No. 41 and the Exchange No. 46.
 
The 2014 Latina Style 50 will be published in the magazine’s special August issue, and the companies will be recognized at the magazine’s awards ceremony and diversity conference early in 2015.