News

Crowd-sourced services provider Gigwalk has blending location-based mobile technology with new analytics capabilities to create Gigwalk Enterprise.

The company contends the new offering will help organization maximize the effectiveness of their workforce from anywhere in real time. Gigwalk said its enterprise offering will allow brands to mobilize internal teams to collect and activate data to mend issues in retail execution, as well as improve collaboration with retailers and supply chain partners to drive in-store sales.

Disney, Nestle Purina, Kraft, Procter & Gamble were top award winners in the 2014 Design of the Times Awards presented at the annual Shopper Marketing Conference & Expo.

The Path to Purchase Institute event recognizes brands, retailers and their partners in packaging and merchandising execution for the most inspiring and creative in-store campaigns and tactics of the previous year. In addition to the coveted Best of the Times award other award levels include Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze.

First it was pet care and now Procter & Gamble is exiting the battery business by shedding the Duracell brand as part of a strategy to focus and strengthen its core portfolio.

The announcement was made in conjunction with the release of first quarter results that saw sales increase 2% to $20.8 billion and earnings per share increase 2% to $1.07 or 9% when adjusted for foreign exchange effects.

E-commerce solutions provider Digital River said it agreed to be acquired by an investor group led by Siris Capital Group in a deal valued at $840 million.

Under the terms of the agreement, Siris will acquire all of the outstanding common shares of Digital River for $26 a share, a 50% premium over the company’s closing price on Oct. 23.

PetSmart has partnered with SickKids Foundation to assist with funding the pet therapy program at The Hospital for Sick Children in Canada.  The program is designed to provide thousands of patients with access to canine comfort teams.  

PetSmart Paws for Hope at SickKids kicked off yesterday with a commitment of $500,000 over the next five years. In addition to the pet therapy program, funds will support the Possibilities Fund which helps support the most urgent needs of the hospital as they arise.  This is the first sponsorship of its kind for PetSmart in Canada.

Nike is set to win womenswear market and recent media extravaganza in Manhattan has shone light on some of the company’s creative marketing strategies.  The preview of the upcoming spring line in collaboration with Brazilian designer Pedro Lourenço was a star-studded event featuring top female athletes striding down the runway.

For the U.S. as a whole, temperatures will trend similar to last year and below normal, but there will be a split in trends across the nation with warmer temperatures in the West and cooler temperatures in the more densely populated East. The month will begin with warm weather across much of the nation and that will continue into the Columbus Day weekend in the East before turning cooler. The Northwest region will trend wetter than last year, but it still remains drier than normal, while the Southwest will be wetter than last year and normal.

3D Systems Corporation appointed Peter Theran as vp consumer retail to lead the expansion of the company's consumer products into new retail markets. Theran’s charter is to broaden the reach and penetration of 3DS' latest consumer products, services and experiences including its Cube 3 and CubePro printers and its expanding portfolio of perceptual devices and online Cubify experiences.

The board of directors of Avery Dennison Corp. has elected Mitchell R. Butier as president and chief operating officer, effective November 1.

Butier has been the company’s senior vice president and chief financial officer since June 2010, and will continue to serve as CFO until a successor is named. Dean A. Scarborough continues as chairman and CEO.

Seattle -- The red ink got worse at Amazon in its third quarter as the Internet giant reported a net loss of $437 million in the third quarter, worse than analysts expected, compared with a net loss of $41 million in the year-ago period.