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Sports Authority is taking steps towards filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, according to Bloomberg.

The retailer has a debt payment due in 10 days and in talk with its lenders about a reorganization plan under which it would close as many as 200 of its more than 450 stores, the report said.
 
Sports Authority reportedly skipped a $20 million in interest payment in January on a $343 million loan. It has 10 days to make the payment.

The nation’s two leading mattress specialty firms are one.

On Friday, Mattress Firm completed its $780 million acquisition of rival Sleepy’s. The combined company will have annual sales of over $3.6 billion through approximately 3,500 retail locations in 48 states.

A high single digit decline in retail traffic in November and early December caused retailers to cut orders of HanesBrands products, but not enough to keep the leading apparel suppliers from posting impressive profit growth and its third consecutive year of record sales.

HanesBrand’s fourth quarter sales woes highlight the weather related difficulties experienced by retailers, the negative effect on traffic and the subsequent margin pressure that was created as retailers had to intensify promotional activity to move merchandise.

Same-store sales at Costco were mostly flat in January across the globe, mirroring reports from other retailers reporting soft sales.

Rite Aid stockholders have voted to approve the proposed merger with Walgreens Boots Alliance, the Pennsylvania retailer announced Thursday morning.

Approximately 97% of the votes cast at today's special meeting of stockholders voted in favor of the adoption of the merger agreement, which represented approximately 74% of Rite Aid's total outstanding shares of common stock as of the Dec. 18, 2015 record date and constitutes a majority of the outstanding shares of Rite Aid common stock entitled to vote at the special meeting.

A digital consumer touch-point long thought to offer little in the way of “hard” ROI appears to be changing that trend.

According to a study of aggregated, anonymized U.S. traffic and revenue data from Kibo (the new company created from the merger of MarketLive, Shopatron and Fiverun), there was a 138% increase in total social revenue during 2015 compared to 2014.

For all their talk about the customer, most retailers have yet to evolve to a business model that is truly customer-centric.

That’s the conclusion of a new industry study by strategic consulting firm The O Alliance that was created in partnership with Revmetri.

For all their talk about the customer, most retailers have yet to evolve to a business model that is truly customer-centric.

That’s the conclusion of a new industry study by strategic consulting firm The O Alliance that was created in partnership with Revmetri.