News

The OurPet's Company, a leading proprietary pet supply company, has promoted Gabriella DeSantis to VP of marketing.

DeSantis joined the company in July 2012 as senior director of marketing and has been responsible for overseeing the execution of the company's new two-brand marketing strategy. The company also credits her with the successful launch of several new products.

Seattle — Amazon.com is reportedly entering the online payment arena.

According to Reuters, Amazon.com will offer a service where for a fee, registered customers can use credit card information stored on Amazon.com to pay for services such as utilities or digital subscriptions.

According to a Reuters report, Amazon is making headway into the online payments arena, which has long been dominated by PayPal.

The article says Amazon will start managing subscription payments for startups and other companies as soon as Monday. The service, according to the report, will allow the company's more than 240 million active users to use credit card details stored on Amazon.com to pay for services such as a monthly phone bill or a digital music subscription — for a fee on each transaction payable to Amazon.

Irvine, Calif. — Sage North America is releasing the new Sage Exchange Payment Management System to consolidate all of retail small-to-mid-sized business (SMB) payment activity onto one platform. SMBs can use Sage Exchange to monitor and manage the payments from all their sales environments: on the web, over the phone, through mobile devices, or at their storefront, on a 24/7 basis.

The Hillshire Brands Company has confirmed that it received a unilateral binding offer from Tyson Foods to acquire all its outstanding common shares for $63 per share in cash.

By its terms, the Tyson Foods offer will remain in place until the termination of the Hillshire Brands/Pinnacle merger agreement or December 12, whichever comes first.

Boston — Three in four (75%) retailers can or intend to identify customers when they walk in the store, including 3% who already do so and 72% who are planning to do so within five years. According to the new 2014 CRM/Unified Commerce Benchmark Survey of top North American retailers from Boston Retail Partners, 95% of respondents indicated customer experience/ customer engagement is one of their top three current initiatives.

Roughly 1,300 American Eagle Outfitters employees are participating this year in the retailer’s second annual AEO Better World Community Day.

The operator of more than 1,000 stores throughout the U.S. and several international markets developed the community involvement initiative last year as a means to unite employees for a common cause to make a difference at the local level. The company designated Tuesday, June 10 as Better World Day.

Weis Markets plans to offer online shopping with in-store pick-up at its Fogelsville store beginning June 8.