News

Sandpoint, Idaho -- Coldwater Creek Inc. on Friday filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, with plans to close its stores and wind down operations by early summer.

New York – Retail marketers say social media and digital, customer data and brand awareness are their top three marketing challenges. Findings from a retail marketing survey SAP conducted with University of Arizona students also showed that survey participants said 100% of respondents cited digital advertising among the most important marketing tools for their organization.

Pleasanton, Calif. -- Safeway Inc. has received a request for additional information and documents from the Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") in connection with the FTC's review of the previously announced agreement and plan of merger among Safeway and Albertson’s.

San Diego – PriceSmart Inc. reported increases in net earnings and revenues during the second quarter of fiscal 2014. Compared to the same period a year earlier, net earnings rose 14% to $28.3 million, from $24.9 million.

Revenues climbed 11% to $674.4 million from $607.4 million. The opening of two new warehouse club stores contributed to PriceSmart’s fiscal performance.

San Mateo, Calif. -- Sony Network Entertainment International LLC and Sony Computer Entertainment America LLC have unveiled a new feature that enables users of participating mobile networks in Canada to top up their account wallet to purchase content from the PlayStation Store and across Sony Entertainment Network using a mobile phone account.

London – Big Data technology provider ECommera has named Kevin Sterneckert as chief marketing officer. Sterneckert, who most recently served as the lead retail analyst for Gartner, brings with him more than 20 years of experience in retail leadership.

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In recognition of its support of national defense and the uniformed service community Safeway received the Military Officers Association of America’s highest honor.

Safeway was presented with the organization’s Distinguished Service Award at an event in Washington, D.C., in recognition of its outstanding support as an employer of Guard and Reserve members and veterans. The Military Officers Association of America (MOAA) ’s highest honor. MOAA was founded in 1929 and has 380,000 members.

Guy Hayward was named CEO of Massmart to fill a position currently held by Grant Pattison, the executive who engineered the sale of a majority stake of the South African retailer to Walmart.

Pattison joined Massmart in 1998 and served as CEO since 2007, helping to engineer the sale of a majority stake in the company to Walmart several years ago. Assuming the CEO role on June 1 will be current COO Guy Hayward. He joined Massmart in 2000 as CFO and was later named COO and also played a key role in the Walmart and Massmart transaction.

Because the Easter holiday is in April this year rather than in March as it was last year, Gap already expected March to be a challenging month performance-wise.  

The retailer reported net sales of $1.5 billion for the five-week period ended April 5. Comparable sales for March were down 6% versus a 1 % decrease last year.

“While March performance has been challenging, we remain confident in the opportunities ahead,” said chairman and CEO Glenn Murphy. “We are pleased to reaffirm our full-year EPS guidance range.”