News

Tractor Supply Co. plans to open two pet-focused stores under the new “HomeTown Pet” brand.

The new pet supply retail concepts operated by Tractor Supply Company will open in mid-November in Franklin and Fairview, cities within close proximity to the company’s headquarters.

Lumber Liquidators has promoted Ray Cotton to SVP, chief compliance and sustainability officer. Cotton will continue to report directly to president and CEO Robert Lynch.  

Branded lifestyle apparel and footwear company VF Corporation has promoted Scott A. Roe, currently VP, controller and chief accounting officer, as CFO. Roe replaces SVP and CFO Robert K. Shearer, who announced plans to retire in March 2015, after 28 years with the company.

Mars Petcare has opened a state-of-the-art, Gold-LEED certified $110 million global innovation center in Thompson's Station, Tennessee. The new campus is the third Mars Petcare innovation center and first in the United States.

The company selected the location in Thompson's Station in part because Tennessee is home to Mars facilities in Cleveland, Chattanooga, Lebanon and Franklin (two locations).

PowerReviews, a leading provider of ratings, reviews and question-and-answer technology, is partnering with Olapic, a visual commerce platform for collecting, curating and sharing customer photos and videos on e-commerce sites.

The companies believe their strategic partnership can help brands and retailers create more authentic and compelling e-commerce experiences by capturing and embedding user-generated content such as ratings, reviews, images and video directly into the purchase path.

Hy-Vee is looking to improve operations and reduce shrink, and to that end, will be deploying Agilence’s Retail 20/20 exception reporting tool.  

"While looking for a solution we were keen on finding one that could help us improve our in-store operations, while also making exception reporting a priority," said Darren Baty, SVP and chief information officer, Hy-Vee. "After seeing Retail 20/20 in action it became clear that we would be able to reduce shrink and improve our front end with this tool."

Sports Authority has partnered with the National Sports Center for the Disabled (NSCD) in honor of National Disability Employment Awareness Month. Throughout the month of October, Sports Authority locations nationwide will be collecting point-of-sale donations with the goal of raising at least $150,000 for the NSCD.

All proceeds will go toward benefiting the lives of children and adults with disabilities.

Vera Bradley will be deploying consumer behavior insights and location-based analytics provider ShopperTrak's Perimeter Analytics tool at each of its new U.S. stores this year, with plans to roll out the service across all corporate stores in the coming year.

Belk, Discovery Education and the International Society for Technology in Education have launched the Belk Service Learning Challenge, a comprehensive standards-aligned program encouraging middle school students to facilitate positive changes in their communities by applying critical thinking, problem-solving and creativity skills to a service-learning project of their choice.

First Data Corporation has bolstered its senior leadership team as part of its ongoing transformation from a payments processor to a collaborative technology company and solutions provider for merchants and financial institutions around the world.

The company promoted two executives to new roles: Barry McCarthy to lead four strategic businesses including the STAR Network and Sanjiv Das to lead First Data’s international business. The company has also brought in two new hires: Andrew Gelb to lead the financial services business and Adam Rosman as general counsel.