News

WASHINGTON — Lowe’s and the USO treated hundreds of servicemen and women and their families to an all-American event headlined by a charity grill-off at Nationals Park to thank the U.S. armed forces and celebrate the Fourth of July. 

Active-duty troops from each branch of the armed services grilled up burgers for the grilling competition.

Retailing Today will be closed Thursday, July 4, in observance of Independence Day. Have a happy and safe holiday, and look for our Daily Newsletter Friday, July 5.

MONROE, Mich. — La-Z-Boy has nominated Michael T. Lawton to serve a one-year term on the company's board of directors. La-Z-Boy shareholders will get to vote at the annual meeting, Aug. 21.

Walmart has begun the latest installment of its social media-inspired merchandising initiative known as, "Get on the Shelf."

The program, developed by the company’s digital think tank @WalmartLabs, affords entrepreneurs the ability to have their product featured on Walmart.com and possibly in select Walmart stores. The company issued an open call to anyone with an interesting product to enter between now and July 31 by submitting a video to https://getontheshelf.walmart.com.

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. — Shop.org, the digital arm of the National Retail Federation, has re-elected Scot Wingo, co-founder and CEO of ChannelAdvisor, a leading provider of cloud-based e-commerce solutions for retailers and manufacturers, to its board of directors.

Wingo was re-elected to the 20-member board for another two-year term by existing Shop.org members along with executives from Belk, HSN, Razorfish, Tory Burch and Urban Outfitters. 

A carefully designed customer experience is the cornerstone of modern omni-channel customer relationship marketing. Retailers painstakingly craft marketing messages and engagement strategies that a customer will encounter at a specific time, in a specific place, via a specific channel. The experience often has some flexibility built in so it can adapt to individual customer behavior, wants and needs.

The mantra of “move, nourish, believe” occupies a prominent spot on the blue walls of Lorna Jane, Santa Monica, Calif. With its bright colors, fashionable accents, and welcoming atmosphere, the store has an upbeat, sporty-girl vibe that is very much in keeping with the Australian active wear brand’s positioning. Motivational expressions can be found throughout the space.

Woonsocket, R.I. – CVS is adding a feature to its mobile app that allows customers to check for potential drug interactions by comparing over-the-counter medications they buy with existing over-the-counter and prescription medications they already take. Customers can enter the name or scan the UPC barcode of drugs and have the app’s drug interaction checker automatically compare available product details against medications in their secure personal pharmacy histories.

For years, doomsayers have been predicting the end of brick-and-mortar shopping in favor of the more convenient – albeit two-dimensional – online store experience.

Call me an optimist, but I’ve never bought into the gloom-hype. My feeling has been that brick-and-mortar stores will always be around, and malls (whether open-air or enclosed or flavor-of-the-day format) will survive. A recent announcement by Staples only underscores my optimism.

EVERETT, Wash. — Bealls is looking to Fluke Networks to help it address network issues and monitor the performance of its applications in the wake of the retailer's growing e-commerce business.

Fluke's Visual TruView solution will give the retailer comprehensive visibility into all key systems and applications across more than 500 network locations, enabling immediate remediation of performance issues and minimizing the impact on its 13,000 employees, customers and sales.