News

By Scott Fenwick, Manhattan Associates

For the average consumer, the holiday season probably seems far away. As we recover from back-to-school mayhem, holiday shopping lists are not likely to be top of mind. Very soon, however, decorations will begin creeping onto store shelves, and seasonal commercials will make their first appearances during our favorite TV shows.

Continued softness in mall traffic and lower-than-expected sales from its September fashion show have prompted Christopher & Banks to cut its sales forecast for the third quarter of fiscal 2014.

San Francisco – Acromobile, a provider of SaaS mobile engagement software, and Bitnet, provider of a digital commerce platform for processing Bitcoin payments, are integrating Acromobile Payments with Bitnet’s platform to offer merchants the ability to accept Bitcoin payments. Acromobile Payments with Bitcoin acceptance is available to any merchant as a fully integrated Order-to-Bitcoin-to-Cash solution with integration to leading CRM and ERP systems.

PepsiCo has appointed Tony West EVP of government affairs, general counsel and corporate secretary, effective Nov. 24. He succeeds Larry Thompson, who is retiring after almost a decade of service.

Burlington, N.J. - Affiliates of Bain Capital Partners LLC and certain other stockholders of Burlington Stores Inc. intend to offer eight million shares of the company’s common stock in an underwritten public offering. The offering consists entirely of secondary shares to be sold by the selling stockholders.

Burlington Stores will not sell any shares in the offering and will not receive any proceeds from the offering. J.P. Morgan is acting as sole book-running manager for the offering.

The 2014 holiday shopping season will be characterized by cautious spending, while economic realities create one of two American holiday shoppers — survivalists and selectionists — according to a new report released Tuesday from PricewaterhouseCoopers U.S. and Strategy, titled "2014 Holiday Outlook: Top trends, consumer behaviors and implications for retailers."

Springfield, N.J. – Store closing and pre-opening costs, as well as an unfavorable state tax ruling, reduced net income at Village Super Market Inc. 5% to $5.87 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2014, from $6.2 million in the same quarter the prior year. Two new store openings helped boost net sales 5.5% to $383.8 million, from $376.3 million.

Same-store sales rose 9%. For fiscal 2015, Village Super Market expects same-store sales to range from flat to slightly positive.

For the first time in its history, Amazon will feature top deals from sellers on holiday deal pages worldwide. The holiday deals from sellers will now appear on the Amazon Today’s Deals page, Black Friday Store, Cyber Monday Store and many other high customer traffic site features.