News

Sam’s Club opened three new locations this month including locations near Chicago, Fort Worth and Wichita, Kan., that pushed its club count to 630 units.

Los Angeles – New York-based investment firm Standard General, which owns a roughly 44% stake in troubled apparel retailer American Apparel Inc, is reportedly preparing recovery plans that both include and do not include controversial former CEO and founder Dov Charney. According to Reuters, Standard General is leaving the decision of whether to allow Charney to return to the company up to the American Apparel board, following a third-party investigation by FTI Consulting.

Newegg has kicked off its back-to-school campaign for 2014, which features special deals, promotions and sweepstakes designed to help equip students for the upcoming school year.

Each week of the campaign focuses on a specific theme, highlighting sales on related products and rewarding Newegg customers with special deals through Twitter and Facebook.

Mountain View, Calif. – Customer experience testing provider UserTesting is launching its free service Peek out of beta. Peek allows anyone to receive free five-minute videos of real people using their website, mobile site, or mobile app.

In roughly four months in beta, Peek achieved 40,000-plus user tests delivered, almost two years’ worth of videos watched, 202,000-plus video views, and more than 8,000 social postings and shares. Retailers including Staples and Wal-Mart have used Peek.

eBay enabled record levels of e-commerce and transaction volume via its PayPal subsidiary during the second quarter ended June 30.

The global commerce platform and payments leader said revenue for the period increased 13% to $4.4 billion as the volume of e-commerce activity it facilitated (a metric eBay calls Enabled Commerce Volume or ECV) increased 26% to $62 billion. Net income increased 6% to $676 million, or 53 cents a share, compared to net income of $640 million, or 49 cents a share.

Burlington Stores has updated its comparable store sales guidance for the second quarter ending Aug. 2 and launched a debt refinancing transaction.

Based on the company’s results quarter to date and its estimates for the remainder of July, comparable store sales for the quarter are expected to increase between 3% and 4% — not as much as last year’s second quarter comparable-stores sales increase of 7.8%, but better than its previous estimates of 2% to 3%.

Montreal - In-store mobile device integration and e-commerce solutions, as well as inventory management and predictive analytics software, are the biggest technology priorities for independent brick-and-mortar retailers. According to the first annual Retail Tech Forecast of 640 independent retailers from commerce platform provider LightSpeed, the percentage of retailers deploying tablets, smartphones and other mobile devices for checking out shoppers (currently 17%) is expected to increase a whopping 170% in the coming years.  

Heineken Light’s most recent ad campaign, "Best Tasting Light Beer," features three-time Emmy award-winner and Tony award-winner and host Neil Patrick Harris.  

The reformulated Heineken Light recipe still contains just 99 calories but now includes cascade hops, commonly used in IPAs to create a fuller flavor, crisper aftertaste and a clean finish, the company said.