News

Oklahoma City - Homeland Stores, a 78-store regional supermarket chain headquartered in Oklahoma City, has successfully completed of a mobile payments pilot program with mobile payments technology provider DoubleBeam. Launched in June of this year, Homeland's SwiftScan mobile application allows customers to pay for purchases with a smartphone.

SwiftScan is currently accepted for payment at 20 Homeland locations, with plans to add 26 more locations by the end of October.

New York – 99dresses is introducing a mobile iOS app. 99dresses offers a virtual “clothes swap party” where women list unwanted fashion items and receive virtual “buttons” they can use to claim apparel items listed by other customers. The item listed is then emailed a prepaid USPS shipping label.

Brooklyn, N.Y. -- Home furnishings retailer West Elm today announced its 2013 Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Commitment to Action with a purchasing plan of $35 million in handcrafted products through 2015, a 40% increase in spend during the next two years. West Elm, a member of the Williams-Sonoma, Inc. portfolio of brands, also pledged to make and source these products from businesses adhering to high social responsibility, health and safety standards, meeting local laws, best industry practices and the brand’s vendor code of conduct.

Higher average selling prices and increased volume helped the nation’s largest egg producer report record sales for its first quarter.

Leading outdoor brand Patagonia named former Nike, Coca-Cola and Johnson & Johnson marketing executive Joy Howard as its new VP of marketing.

Howard joined Patagonia’s marketing team effective September 23 and will lead the development and execution of global marketing across all sales channels and communication platforms for Patagonia, as well as for the wider portfolio of Patagonia initiatives in food and media, and new brand extensions.

Steve McKinney was named president of Kroger’s Fry’s Food Stores division in Arizona to succeed Jon Flora who passed away unexpectedly two weeks ago.

McKinney, 57, had previously served as vp of operations at Kroger’s Ralph’s division in California since 2007. The Fry’s division operates 119 stores in Arizona.

Following the lead of specialty retailers such as Lululemon and Athletica, Target has unveiled an exclusive collection of fashion-forward lifestyle apparel for men, women and children — C9 by Champion — just in time for the fall and holiday season.

GRAPEVINE, Texas — Multichannel video game retailer GameStop has announced plans to hire approximately 17,000 employees nationwide as the company prepares for the upcoming PlayStation 4 and Xbox One console launches, as well as the busy holiday shopping season.

The National Retail Federation has announced the development of a new chief marketing officer council to serve as an advertising and marketing voice for the retail industry. The organization’s Retail Advertising and Marketing Association will transition into the newly created council.

Macy’s has announced plans to hire 83,000 seasonal employees at its Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s stores, call centers, distribution centers and online fulfillment centers nationwide for the 2013 holiday season, representing a 3.8% increase from last year’s 80,000 seasonal hires.