News

By John Bajorek, WD Partners

The only reason for time, Albert Einstein once observed, is so that everything doesn’t happen at once. While it still holds true for the rest of life, shopping is another story.

By Steve Sensing, VP, Ryder System

Bentonville, Ark. – Wal-Mart Stores is moving deeper into financial services. The retailer is launching an exclusive checking account product, called GoBank, with Green Dot Corp., a prepaid-cards specialist that has a subsidiary bank. Wal-Mart already offers a prepaid debit card, credit card, check cashing and money transfers.

Union, N.J. – Bed, Bath & Beyond Inc. reported net earnings of $223.95 million in the second quarter of fiscal 2014, down 10% from $249.3 million but still ahead of Wall Street projections. Increases in both interest expense and selling, general and administrative expense helped reduce net earnings.

Oklahoma City, Okla. – In a Sept. 23 webinar hosted by Chain Store Age and sponsored by Microsoft Dynamics and Junction Solutions, marital arts training equipment retailer Century Martial Arts explained how by using a Microsoft Dynamics AX business intelligence platform, it is able to better track trends and predict future performance.

London - Shopitize, a U.K.-based provider of mobile, interactive shopping intelligence, is using Tableau's visual analytics to provide actionable insight into consumers' brand-specific shopping baskets. Shopitize is providing brand partners with access to real-time retail intelligence.

New York – Cache Inc. has entered into a new, three year, $30 million revolving credit facility with Salus Capital Partners LLC. The new facility replaces the company’s existing $25 million revolving credit facility with Wells Fargo Bank, National Association.

“We are pleased to have secured this new credit facility with Salus Capital, which improves our financial flexibility as we continue to implement our turnaround plan to position Cache for profitable growth,” said Jay Margolis, chairman and CEO Cache.

New York -- Total holiday sales are expected to rise 4% to 4.5% over last season, totaling between $981 and $986 billion, according to Deloitte’s annual retail holiday sales forecast. The growth represents a moderate improvement over last year’s 2.8% gain.

Additionally, Deloitte forecasts a 13.5% to 14% increase in non-store sales in the online and mail order channels during the 2014 holiday season.  

Seattle -- Starbucks Corp. will acquire the remaining shares of its Japanese joint venture, Starbucks Coffee Japan, for $913 million to accelerate growth across multiple channels in the country, including the introduction of new concepts such as Teavana. The acquisition is the largest to date made by Starbucks. Japan is the company’s second-largest market in store sales after the United States.

“Full ownership in this market is the right approach for the future," said Troy Alstead, COO, Starbucks, in a conference call with analysts.

A massive share repurchase program at Bed Bath & Beyond enabled the company to overcome increased expenses and a decline in gross margins to produce earning per share growth that exceeded analysts’ estimates.