News

Longtime Walmart executive Tom Coughlin, an inspirational leader who played a key role in Walmart’s growth and left the company in 2005, passed away on April 1.

Apparel retailer Express has been building its brand and upping its cool factor among millennials by signing up famous athletes and models to serve as “brand ambassadors.”

It’s just one of several tactics that the chain is using to drive its performance under the leadership of CEO David Kornberg, who took the reins in January 2015.

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Amazon.com is serving notice to Apple, PayPal and other leading online payment providers that it is looking to challenge their turf.

The online retail giant is launching a new program called the Amazon Payments Partner Program that enables e-commerce platforms to provide Amazon Payments functionality to their users. Previously, Amazon had made its proprietary payments service available to individual third-party online retailers.

Lowe’s Companies Inc. is expanding its use of augmented and virtual reality to help customers truly “visualize” home improvement projects.

Two e-commerce vets are looking to tackle one of the retail industry’s most vexing problems: returns of online purchases.

David Sobie, former senior VP of marketing & business development at flash site HauteLook, and Mark Geller, former head of mobile at the company (which Nordstrom acquired in 2011), are launching Happy Returns, which seeks to eliminate the “pain” of returns by mail by establishing a network of “Return Bars” in malls and stores where shoppers can return merchandise purchased online and get an immediate refund.

Although Amazon.com recently more than tripled the number of items available via its Amazon Dash buttons and cited some impressive growth statistics, actual use may be relatively low.

According to daily analysis of a panel of more than 4 million online shoppers from digital commerce research firm Slice Intelligence, fewer than 50% of people who had bought a Dash button before Amazon expanded the assortment on March 31 had ever actually made an order using one.

There are going to be a lot of happy chickens roaming free in the coming years as retailer after retailer establish dates by which they will offer only cage-free eggs.

Meijer and Supervalu recently announced plans to source only cage-free eggs by 2025, joining Delhaize and Albertson’s who earlier this year set 2025 as their cage-free deadline. Ahold USA earlier this year also indicated it would be cage-free by 2022. Walmart and Costco have also announced cage-free commitments as have some major food suppliers such as Nestle.

Phillips Edison Grocery Center REIT II announced the acquisition of the 67,280 sq. ft. Lakewood City Center in Lakewood, Ohio.

The shopping center is anchored by a 39,400 sq. ft. Marc’s grocery store, the No. 2 grocer in the Cleveland area. Additional retail includes: Gamestop, Best Cuts, Pet Supplies Plus, the UPS Store, Boston Market, Marco’s Pizza, Ace Cash Express, T-Mobile, Palm Beach Tan, and Chipotle Mexican Grill.