News

Dollar General elevated COO Todd Vasos to the role of CEO, filling a position held by Rick Dreiling who is sticking to his original retirement timetable after losing out to Dollar Tree in the bidding for Family Dollar.

Brian Cornell, CEO and chairman of Target Corp., has focused on digital innovation since he took the top spot at the chain last August. He recently participated in a Q&A at the high-profile tech event, the Code Conference, in Ranchos Palos, California.  

Here are some highlights from his conversation, as posted on Target’s very own Bullseye View blog.

Armonk, N.Y. – IBM has released new industry-specific solutions with pre-built predictive analytics capabilities for industries including retail, to uncover and act on critical business insights. IBM is working with retail signature design partners including Urban Outfitters.

We live in interesting times when it comes to all the ways we can pay and complete purchases, times when you can now order food for delivery without ever leaving your search engine. More convenient and secure ways of making payments are advancing on a number of interesting fronts, including computer chip enabled EMV credit and debit cards that are soon to replace magnetic stripe cards in the United States, and mobile phone-based digital wallets like Apple Pay and CurrentC (not to mention the digital currency bitcoin, which admittedly we’re pulling for).

Irvine, Calif. – A lower tax rate and slowed growth in cost of sales and selling, general and administrative (SG&A) expenses helped Tilly’s Inc. more than double net income to $1.3 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2015, compared to $600,000 the same quarter a year earlier.

Total net sales were $120.2 million, an increase of 8% compared to $111.1 million. Same-store sales rose 2%.

The integration of Zales helped Signet Jewelers turn i a robust financial performance in the first quarter.

Seattle – Amazon is upping the ante with physical retailers with its launch of free same-day delivery for orders of more than $35 to members of its Prime program.

The new service, called Prime Free Same-Day Delivery, is available for more than one million items and in 14 U.S. metropolitan areas. Orders must be placed before noon local time to be delivered by 9 p.m., seven days a week.

Hudson's Bay Company has appointed a former Toys”R”Us executive and Target veteran as chief of human resources.

Dan Caspersen will be responsible for leading the human resources function across the company, and report directly into the office of the chairman, the company said.