News

Houston - Mattress Firm Holding Corp. has completed its acquisition of the mattress specialty retail assets and operations of Back to Bed Inc., M World Mattress LLC, MCStores LLC and TBE Orlando LLC, which collectively operate Back to Bed and Bedding Experts retail stores in Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin and Bedding Experts and Mattress Barn retail stores in Florida.

Vera Bradley will be deploying consumer behavior insights and location-based analytics provider ShopperTrak's Perimeter Analytics tool at each of its new U.S. stores this year, with plans to roll out the service across all corporate stores in the coming year.

By Navneet Loiwal, CEO and co-founder of Shopular

PowerReviews, a leading provider of ratings, reviews and question-and-answer technology, is partnering with Olapic, a visual commerce platform for collecting, curating and sharing customer photos and videos on e-commerce sites.

The companies believe their strategic partnership can help brands and retailers create more authentic and compelling e-commerce experiences by capturing and embedding user-generated content such as ratings, reviews, images and video directly into the purchase path.

Branded lifestyle apparel and footwear company VF Corporation has promoted Scott A. Roe, currently VP, controller and chief accounting officer, as CFO. Roe replaces SVP and CFO Robert K. Shearer, who announced plans to retire in March 2015, after 28 years with the company.

Milford, Conn. -- Subway announced the nationwide availability of contactless/NFC-based mobile payments in partnership with Softcard, completing a rollout that was announced earlier this month.   

In the future, Subway will integrate its card rewards program into the Softcard app in participating markets, providing a simpler way to earn reward points.

Carle Place, N.Y. -- 1-800-Flowers.com announced the closing of its acquisition of Harry & David Holdings, a specialty retailer and producer of branded premium gift-quality fruit, gourmet food products and other gifts.

“This combination will propel our total annual revenues to more than $1.1 billion and offers numerous opportunities to accelerate our top and bottom-line growth going forward,” said Jim McCann, CEO of 1-800-Flowers.com.

San Francisco - Zupa, a mobile marketplace where members buy and sell directly within the app from a user generated community of merchandise, launches today for iPhone and iPod Touch on the App Store. Shipping is calculated automatically and shipping labels are sent to users in an instant.