News

New York -- Crumbs Bake Shops on Monday closed its 48 stores. The cupcake store chain has been struggling for some time. In a May filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, it warned that it "may be forced to curtail or cease its activities" if its operations didn't generate enough cash flow.

Last week, Nasdaq suspended the trading of Crumbs shares on the grounds that the company no longer had at least $2.5 million in shareholder equity, or met benchmarks for an annual net profit.

Atlanta – Following Staples’ expansion of its Staples Connect home and office automation platform to 500 stores, The Home Depot is making Wink-enabled connected home products available for purchase in its nearly 2,000 U.S. stores and online.

Atlanta – Havertys sales for second quarter 2014 increased 2.4% to $175.1 million, compared with $171.1 million for the second quarter of 2013. On a same-store basis, sales for the quarter increased 3.2%.

Havertys closed its Plano, Texas, store in May. In the third quarter, the company will open a new store in Fort Worth, Texas, and relocate its Fayetteville, North Carolina, showroom.

New York -- ImagineX Group, Asia’s leading retail, brand management and distribution company, and Authentic Brands Group, LLC, the new owner of Juicy Couture, today announced a long-term franchise partnership to drive Juicy’s market expansion and category development in China. The partnership will provide the momentum to add more Juicy Couture stores throughout Asia; expand the brand’s reach with new product lines; and support further regional growth initiatives.
 

Washington, D.C. - Americans love giving and receiving gift cards. According to a survey of more than 1,100 U.S. consumers from the Retail Gift Card Association (RGCA), 77% of consumers have given a gift card in the past year and 90% have received at least one in the past year.

St. Petersburg, Fla. – HSN Inc. (HSNi) is promoting chief marketing officer Bill Brand to president of HSN, effective immediately. Brand will retain his role as chief marketing officer of HSNi and will continue to report directly to HSNi CEO Mindy Grossman.

Brand is also an executive officer of the company. As president, he will assume responsibility of merchandising, programming, planning and HSN2 in addition to his current responsibilities.

San Jose, Calif. – RetailNext Inc., a provider of Big Data analysis solutions for physical retail, has completed $30 million in growth financing. The company drew strategic investments from Qualcomm Inc. through its venture investment group Qualcomm Ventures, Tyco and American Express.

Nokia Growth Partners (NGP) led the round which included new investor Activant Capital Group and existing shareholders August Capital, StarVest Partners and Commerce Ventures. The financing brings the total capital raised by RetailNext to $59 million.

New York -- The American Apparel saga continues, with the beleaguered chain receiving a notice of default from its longtime lender, Lion Capital.
   
The default notice was based on the claim that founder Dov Charney ceased to be CEO of the company, according to a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission today. (Lion had a stipulation in its loan agreement, which was signed last year, stating that if Charney left the company, it would be in default.)
  


Having passed the calendar’s mid-point, we thought it would be interesting to take a look at the most viewed stories of the year to date on Chainstoreage.com.

Free Standing Insert (FSI) coupon activity increased 3.4% based on Coupons Dropped during the first six months of 2014 versus the same time period in 2013, according to Marx, a Kantar Media solution.

FSI Coupons Dropped within non-food categories increased 8.2% to represent 65% of the 158 billion FSI coupons distributed during this period.