News

Boston – College students most frequently eat snack foods in the afternoon and are frequently replacing meals with snacks. A new study from marketing agency Fluent shows that 75% of college students replace meals with snacks and afternoon snacking is three times more popular than morning or late night snacking.

Other notable findings of the survey college students age 18-25 include:

Cosmetics retailer Lush is turning to Storage Made Easy’s Enterprise File Share and Sync solution with data stored on OpenStack Swift to help improve its global reach.


Lush ran an initial two month trial with 50 people prior to moving forward with the Storage Made Easy solution. They subsequently rolled out the solution in stages, by department, first to 150 people and then on to 300 people, and then again on to 500 people.

“Lush expects to reach more than 1,000 users by the time the solution is fully rolled out," said Jim Liddle, Storage Made Easy CEO.

San Francisco - Walk-by conversion and in-store engagements among U.S., consumers slipped in September compared to August as consumers became more cautious and less compelled to shop after back-to-school spending. In-store analytics technology vendor Euclid’s U.S. Retail Benchmarks for September 2013, based on 20 million domestic shopping sessions, suggest September same-store and total store sales may be sluggish for many retailers.

Specific findings include:

Los Angeles -- Rite Aid Corp. has been ordered to pay more than $12 million to settle a civil environmental protection lawsuit filed in California claiming about 600 of its stores illegally dumped pesticides, bleach and other toxics, the Associated Press reported.

The lawsuit was filed last month by the district attorneys of Los Angeles, San Joaquin and Riverside counties, with a total of 52 California district attorneys joining the civil action.

Safeway plans to exit the Chicago market where it operates 72 supermarkets under the Dominick’s banner by early 2014 after posting third quarter profits that were roughly half those of the comparable period the prior year.
The decision to exit Chicago follows similar move earlier this year when Safeway announced the sale of its Canadian operations.

New York -- U.S. chain-store sales posted a gain of 4.0% for the fiscal month of September on a year-over-year basis according to a tally compiled by the International Council of Shopping Centers. Excluding gasoline sales, the September tally would actually be +5.1%.

The Men’s Wearhouse has rejected Jos. A. Bank’s offer to acquire the retailer for about $2.3 billion in a $48 per share all-cash offer, and Jos. A. Banks is not taking no for an answer. 

The acquisition would create a men’s apparel powerhouse with more than 1,700 stores across the nation. However, the Men’s Wearhouse said in a press release that the unsolicited offer significantly undervalues the company, is inadequate and not in the best interests of the company or its shareholders.

Philadelphia -- More than three-fourths (79%) of retailers expect an increase in sales this holiday season – the highest percentage seen since the financial downturn. That’s according to global management consultancy Hay Group’s seventh annual retail holiday survey, whose results were more optimistic that several other holiday forecasts.