News

Chicago – Bigger is often said to be better, but some big restaurant chains may not agree. The 500 largest restaurant chains in the U.S. accelerated their cumulative sales growth in 2014 to a 4% increase, totaling an estimated $274.4 billion, according to data released by Technomic Inc.

But some of the biggest brands among them, namely Subway and McDonald's, lost ground to focused-menu competitors and emerging fast-casual chains and reported overall sales decreases for the year.

Most Americans plan to stock up on food and clothing for the Easter holiday, according to the National Retail Federation.

NRF’s Easter Spending Survey conducted by Prosper Insights & Analytics reports that the average person celebrating Easter will spend $140.62, slightly more than last year’s $137.46. Total spending for Easter, which includes purchases of apparel, decorations, gifts, candy, food, flowers and more, is expected to reach $16.4 billion.

Sears and Craftsman have kicked off their second annual “MAKEcation” promotion with a sweepstakes that sends the winner to an event this fall in Brooklyn. 

From now through July 31, Craftsman Club and Shop Your Way members can enter for a chance to win a trip to this experience by visiting www.craftsman.com/makecation.

New York -- A surging housing market is giving Lowe’s Cos. a feeling optimistic, to the tune of $5 billion.

The company’s board of directors announced that it has authorized a new repurchase program of $5 billion of the company's common stock. This new repurchase program has no expiration date and adds to the previous program's balance, which was $2.4 billion as of Jan. 30.

Framingham, Mass. - A six-sigma green belt, Victoria Brown joins IDC Retail Insights  as senior research analyst, retail supply chain.  In this new role, Brown will spearhead the supply chain research program.

She will be covering topics such as inventory management, warehouse management, logistics and omnichannel distributed order orchestration. Most recently, Brown served as a supply chain leader, overseeing load balance and tracking distribution channels for the third-largest plant in Frito Lay North America.  
 

Chapel Hill, N.C. - Kirkland's Home has overhauled its planning architecture and strategy with a customized, automated assortment planning solution based on Oracle technology. Replacing a previous manual planning system, Oracle implementer Veltio configured the Kirkland's assortment planning solution to address the retailer’s specific challenges.  

Outdoor retailer REI reached new heights in 2014 thanks to unprecedented membership growth which fueled a 4.2% same store sales increase and a record financial performance.

The same store sales increased and addition of seven new stores helped the company increase total sales 9.9% to $2.2 billion. The company ended the year with 5.5 million active members, 945,000 of whom joined the retail cooperative in 2014.

The 330-unit specialty retailer Kirkland’s is looking to grow sales following a dramatic upgrade to its assortment planning process.

The company switched from a manual system running on Microsoft Excel to Oracle’s portfolio of assortment, financial, location and item planning solutions. Kirkland’s work with Veltio, the leading consultancy in the design, implementation and tuning of Oracle planning and optimization solutions for the retail industry.