News

Brisbane, California — bebe stores CEO Steve Birkhold has left the company, effectively immediately, and an interim chief has been named to lead while a search for a permanent replacement is underway, said bebe stores on Thursday.

Following the sudden departure of Birkhold, the board appointed Jim Wiggett, currently CEO of Jackson Hole Group, as bebe’s interim CEO.

Amy Heidersbach, who has spent the last four years at eBay overseeing various marketing efforts, including Pay Pal, has joined customer experience management company Needle as SVP, chief marketing officer.

Heidersbach led PayPal’s $12.5 billion enterprise and retail solutions unit while at eBay and also was also on the executive team that founded X.commerce, the online auction house’s ecommerce platform division. Heidersbach brought X.commerce together with ecommerce platform Magento after it was acquired by eBay in 2011.

Montano Lucino, Italy — Italian hypermarket retailer Bennet has completed the rollout of electronic article surveillance (EAS) loss prevention solutions in its stores in Italy. The solution involves the installation of 1,000 P20 EAS antennas from Checkpoint’s Evolve solutions, as well as radio frequency (RF) tags, Alpha high-theft solutions and point-of-sale deactivators, in addition to the rollout of an RF source-tagging program aimed at increasing on-shelf availability, improving open merchandising while reducing labor costs and inventory shrink.

Lululemon founder Chip Wilson has voted against the re-election of Michael Casey and RoAnn Costin to the company’s board of directors.

Wilson founded the company in 1998, and has seen it evolve through many business cycles, expanding it from a small storefront in Vancouver to an international brand with more than 250 stores.

Brussels, Belgium — The European Union (E.U.) is investigating lucrative tax breaks individual member countries such as Ireland, the Netherlands and Luxembourg have been giving major global companies including Starbucks and Apple. Media reports indicate the E.U. is focusing on whether certain tax loopholes these countries have provided some corporations qualify as “state aid,” which is prohibited under E.U. bylaws.

New York — Managed analytics provider Ugam is releasing a comprehensive electronics category intelligence solution which provides product pricing, assortment and content intelligence to help electronics retailers determine which products to offer, at what prices to sell them, and how to best describe them in order to optimize margins and maximize profitable conversion rates.

Chine-based e-commerce company DHgate allows consumers and business to purchase goods directly from Chinese manufacturers and has big growth plans after hiring veterans of Amazon, Google, eBay and Alibaba.