News

Academy Sports + Outdoors plans to open four new stores next year in Kissimmee, Lake Mary, Waterford Lakes and Melbourne. Although the sports, outdoor and lifestyle retailer is no stranger to Florida — with an established presence in Jacksonville, Pensacola and Tallahassee — these four new stores are the first in the Orlando area.

In addition, Academy has entered into a multi-year agreement with the Univ. of Central Florida.

Hormel Foods Corporation has elected three new members to its board of directors: Gary C. Bhojwani, chairman of Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America; Sally J. Smith, president and CEO of Buffalo Wild Wings; and Steven A. White, president, Comcast West Division.

“We welcome Gary, Sally and Steve to our board and look forward to their valuable input and contributions to the growth and success of Hormel Foods,” said Jeffrey M. Ettinger, chairman of the board, president and CEO of Hormel Foods.

Ace Hardware will be implementing uStudio’s video platform to drive its sales training processes. The enterprise video platform-as-a-service provider is offering sales presentations and best practices techniques via the video to Ace’s more than 4,800 stores and 70,000 sales staff.

The goal of the video training program, according to uStudio, is for every salesperson to engage with customers more effectively and deliver on Ace Hardware's brand promise: "Being the most helpful hardware stores on the planet."

Jim Wade, who has 35 years of experience in retail, is the newest member of closeout retailer Tuesday Morning’s board of directors. Wade will be part of the board’s audit committee.

Online home furnishings company Wayfair has added e-commerce expert Romero Rodrigues to its board of directors.

Rodrigues, a 36-year-old Brazil native, is currently global CEO at South African company Naspers, which acquired his company Buscape in 2009 for $374 million.

Expanded farm, ranch, automotive and pet products enabled True Value to grow second quarter same store sales 2.2% and report broad-based strength at its nationwide network of 4,500 stores.
 
Revenue was $429.5 million, an increase of 4.5% from $411.2 million for the same period a year ago. The cooperative posted a quarterly net margin of $23.2 million, down 2.5% compared to $23.8 million from a year ago.

The @WalmartLabs unit of the retailer’s Global eCommerce division has done another deal in Silicon Valley, acquiring the social shopping site Luvocracy.

The National Retail Federation has formed the Small Business Retail Council to organize, recruit and engage Main Street merchants and independent community retailers in grassroots advocacy activities.

The council will represent and be responsive to the needs, concerns and interests of local shops and provide the association’s small business members a forum to discuss the most pressing public policy issues and priorities.

Lowe's continues to invest in capabilities to better serve professional customers, and has launched ProExpress, an on-demand delivery service to that end.

Since April 2014, these light-duty trucks have made thousands of deliveries directly to business sites to meet a wide range of needs. Through the program, Lowe's has helped pros by fulfilling emergency orders such as smoke detectors to pass an inspection, or shingles to complete a job before a storm. The ProExpress trucks also regularly visit businesses to restock shelves with cleaning and maintenance supplies.

The stakes will be high for every retailer during the upcoming holiday season, but none more so than RadioShack where a stellar fourth quarter could help the company avert a gloomy scenario outlined by Moody’s Investors Service.

The rating agency suggested in a report released July 29 that RadioShack has adequate liquidity to see it through this year, but noted that 2015 could be a different matter.