News

Walmart makes more exec moves, creates new titles
The restructuring of Walmart’s senior executive ranks continues with the latest round of appointments involving some familiar leaders in new roles with curious titles as well as some key resignations.
PetSmart gives $450K to Children's Health
PetSmart is teaming up with Children’s Health to help fund its pet therapy program, which will provide thousands of patients with access to canine comfort teams.

PetSmart Paws for Hope at Children’s Health is starting off with a commitment of$425,000 from PetSmart over five years.

Famous Footwear gains profitable new footing

Improved conversion and customer service at Brown Shoe’s Famous Footwear stores are the anticipated benefits of a new merchandise allocation and replenishment solution the company has deployed.

The 1,041 unit Famous Footwear division of Brown Shoe recently announced it had deployed the Q Allocation and Replenishment solution from Minneapolis-based Quantum Retail Technology. The Quantum solution works in conjunction with Famous Footwear’s legacy JDA solution, according to the company, to produce a wide range of benefits.
SAS aids European retailers in CRM, logistics, marketing

Cary, N.C. – SAS Institute Inc. has recently completed rollouts of CRM, logistics and marketing solutions at several European retailers. For example, Milan, Italy-based online wine retailer Wineverse chose SAS Visual Analytics to increase customer insights and reduce supply chain costs that result in greater customer satisfaction.
Japanese eyewear brand to open its first U.S. store

San Francisco -- One of the largest eyewear brands in Japan is entering the United States. Tokyo-based Jins, a pioneer of “smart” eyewear, will open a flagship in San Francisco, and launch a U.S. e-commerce site this spring.
EBay to cut jobs, spin off enterprise division

Ebay Inc. said it plans to cut about 2,400 positions, or 7% of its workforce, across eBay marketplaces, PayPal, and eBay enterprise in the current quarter to simplify its organizational structure.

The company also said it will explore strategic options for eBay enterprise, including a sale or an IPO.
Retailers make surprising admission at NRF

More than 200 retail and technology professionals surveyed on show floor at the recent National Retail Federation convention offered a mix of disturbing and enlightening thoughts on the state of EMV readiness, omnichannel investments and mobile wallet winners.

The survey conducted in person by representatives of payments company ACI Worldwide at NRF’s Big Show revealed that:
Most toy retailers had Merry Christmas

The popularity of Disney’s Frozen license and a final surge of spending allowed most U.S. toy retailers to grow sales this past holiday season, according to new data from NPD.
Lowe's to hire 30K workers for spring

It may not feel like it in many parts of the country, but spring, the busiest time of the year for home improvement stores, is just around the corner. And Lowe’s is wasting no time in getting ready.

The retailer said it plans to hire 30,000 employees at its stores in the United States during spring.

Home Depot is sure to follow the move by Lowe's with its own hiring spree in the next few weeks, especially considering it hired as many as 80,000 seasonal employees in winter/spring 2014.
Amazon shuts digital wallet

Seattle -- Amazon.com’s Amazon Wallet will never get the chance to make it out of beta. Multiple press reports indicate Amazon is shutting down its beta release of the mobile wallet application, which launched in July 2014.