News

Laval, Canada - Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. will acquire 55 Super Pantry convenience stores and related assets from Tri Star Marketing Inc. Fifty-one of the stores are located in the state of Illinois ,and four stores located in the state of Indiana. These stores offer Phillips 66 and Mobil branded motor fuel.

Santa Cruz, Calif. - Sixty-six percent of retailers attending the recent Big Data & Analytics for Retail Summit believe the number one way to ensure a successful holiday season is to understand customer behavior to drive sales and build loyalty. Moreover, data from business analytics provider Looker shows that four-in-10 retailers feel they are still ineffective when it comes to using data to improve business performance.

Downers Grove, Ill. -- FTD Companies Inc. will acquire the Provide Commerce floral and gifting business from Liberty Interactive Corp. for $430 million in cash and stock. Both companies have annual revenues of more than $600 million.

Electronics company Vizio has kicked off a back-to-school contest for college students that will furnish a winner with electronics and $2,000 toward tuition and books.

The company is encouraging students to upload videos of themselves explaining a story of determination to Vizio’s website through Aug. 19.

Just how often does Amazon change prices throughout the day? And when do other leading retailers adjust their prices? Price intelligence and optimization leader 360pi is out with a new report that answers those questions and sheds lights on some surprising pricing tactics at top retailers.

The report, titled “When Should You Change Your Prices,” explores the phenomenon of pricing dynamism at leading retailers and assesses its effectiveness. What 360pi discovered is that the level of price dynamism can vary dramatically across retailers.

The International Dairy-Deli-Bakery Association (IDDBA) has named former HEB executive Michael J. Eardley as its new president and CEO. Eardley succeeds Carol Christison, who passed away in March, after leading the association for 31 years.

Eardley will join the IDDBA on August 25 from HEB Grocery Company in San Antonio, Texas, where he has worked for the past 13 years in various roles with increasing responsibility, becoming the director of deli, cheese and prepared foods in 2009.

BitPay, a payment service provider (PSP) specializing in e-commerce, B2B and enterprise solutions for the bitcoin digital currency, has unveiled a new pricing plan that offers basic payment processing free, forever.

The company is hoping to leverage the pricing plan to woo businesses into accepting bitcoin for goods and services.

After a delay of several days, Lumber Liquidators has reported second-quarter results, nearly three weeks after the company revised its full-year guidance, which caused its stock to plummet in recent days.

Net sales for the quarter increased by 2.3%, totaling $263.1 million, compared with $257.1 million in the same quarter last year. But comparable-store sales decreased by 7.1%, with the average sale declining 1.8%. Net income was $16.6 million for the three months ended June 30, down 18.7% from last year's $20.4 million.

Big 5 Sporting Goods’ second-quarter results were affected by a continued reduction in demand for firearms and ammunition. The company also pointed to general softness in the overall consumer environment, adding that the calendar shift of the Easter holiday had a small but unfavorable impact on sales.

The retail industry is undergoing an unprecedented omnichannel transformation with an overwhelming majority of leading retailers aggressively reconfiguring supply chains to provide shoppers a seamless experience, according to a new study from Boston Retail Partners.
 
The omnichannel trend has been underway for many years now, but Boston Retail Partners indicates that more than 90% of retailers are pursuing omnichannel supply chain re-invention efforts the management consulting firm describes as “unified commerce.”