News

San Mateo, Calif. – Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group is debuting its U.S. e-commerce site, 11Main.com, with a beta rollout on Wednesday, June 11. The home page of the invite-only website says “We’re opening soon — our shop owners are getting unpacked and unsettled,” and has an online invite request option. (Alibaba has filed for an initial public offering in the United States, in May.)

Atlanta — Consumer spending in the United States grew 4.2% year-over-year in May 2014, compared to April’s 4.1% year-over-year growth. According to Spend Trend analysis from First Data Corp., spending growth was driven by May’s warm weather, which specifically spurred spending on travel and home improvement.

Brussels, Belgium — The European Union (E.U.) is investigating lucrative tax breaks individual member countries such as Ireland, the Netherlands and Luxembourg have been giving major global companies including Starbucks and Apple. Media reports indicate the E.U. is focusing on whether certain tax loopholes these countries have provided some corporations qualify as “state aid,” which is prohibited under E.U. bylaws.

Midvale, Utah — Increased selling, general and administrative expenses were a key factor in Sportsman’s Warehouse Holdings Inc. swinging to a net loss of $3.37 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2014, compared to net profit of $4.46 million in the same period a year earlier. The retailer plans to open eight new stores during the fiscal year, including four in the second quarter.

Net sales dropped 3% to $132.4 million from $136.5 million. Same store sales decreased by 18.1%, primarily as a result of the decline in demand for firearms and ammunition.

Hilo, Hawaii — KTA Super Stores, a six-store supermarket chain serving the main island of Hawaii, has finalized upgrading Symphony EYC G.O.L.D. to the latest software version. The new capabilities including direct store delivery (DSD) and invoice reconciliation are the first step in KTA’s incorporation of the latest enhanced version of Symphony EYC’s merchandise management system, which is planned to be implemented across all of its island stores.  

Montano Lucino, Italy — Italian hypermarket retailer Bennet has completed the rollout of electronic article surveillance (EAS) loss prevention solutions in its stores in Italy. The solution involves the installation of 1,000 P20 EAS antennas from Checkpoint’s Evolve solutions, as well as radio frequency (RF) tags, Alpha high-theft solutions and point-of-sale deactivators, in addition to the rollout of an RF source-tagging program aimed at increasing on-shelf availability, improving open merchandising while reducing labor costs and inventory shrink.

Schaumburg, Ill. — Motorola Solutions Inc. has released a personal shopping device designed to enable customers to quickly scan items with faster checkouts. The MC18 Personal Shopper is Motorola’s fifth generation personal shopping device and provides shoppers with real-time discount coupons for items they are purchasing and suggestions for complementary merchandise.

Chicago — BrightTag, a provider of real-time, cross-channel marketing technologies, has changed its name to Signal to reflect its focus on helping marketers strengthen the signals between brands and customers. The company also unveiled its Open Data Platform, a patented suite of products designed to help brands make their data and marketing technologies work better together to drive increased engagement, loyalty and conversions.

Irvine, Calif. — PriceSpider, an online retail marketing service provider, is rolling out a re-pricing engine that enables manufacturers and resellers to automatically adjust pricing based on preset or on-the-fly criteria as it pertains to competitive market activity. The PriceSpider re-pricing engine provides the actionable data needed to set rules, manage strategy and optimize pricing activity with visibility into the market.