News

Stater Bros. chairman, president and CEO Jack H. Brown was pleased with the company’s second-quarter performance especially given the challenging environment.

Consolidated sales in the 13 weeks ended March 30 totaled $963.8 million, up $1.9 million (or 0.2%) from the previous year. Sales for the 26 weeks ended March 30, 2014 were $1.95 billion, representing a $17.2 million (or 0.9 %) increase from the same period in the prior year.

Austin, Texas - Compare Metrics, a provider of adaptive commerce navigation and discovery tools, has secured $3.8 million in follow-on financing. The financing is led by Austin Ventures with additional funding by existing investors Julie Allegro of Allegro Venture Partners, Bob Greene of Contour Ventures, Capital Factory, Mike Maples Jr. of Floodgate, Brett Hurt of Hurt Family Investments and independent investors Ralph Mack and Adam Ross.

The CEO search continues at Crocs, but the casual footwear maker does have a new president.

Hoffman Estates, Ill. – Sears Holdings Corp. on Wednesday confirmed it is exploring strategic options for its 51% interest in Sears Canada Inc., including a sale. To assist in its efforts, the retailer said it will hire to an investment banking firm.

Sears Canada's board of directors and management intend to cooperate fully with Sears Holdings in this process. Net loss attributable to Sears Holdings’ shareholders was $358 million and $1.4 billion, respectively, for the fourth quarter and full year of 2013.

Unleashed by Petco is taking over the reins of the largest surfing dog competition in the United States. Fifty dogs are expected to participate in this year's Surf Dog competition, which will be held July 13 in Imperial Beach, Calif., adjacent to the pier.

Lowe’s hosted the competition for the past eight years. Unleashed by Petco is ready to take the helm and take things to “the next level.”

San Jose, Calif. – Adobe Systems is focusing on new predictive marketing and real-time customer engagement capabilities in several new digital marketing and analytics releases. Marketing Cloud Exchange, a new core service in Adobe Marketing Cloud (AMC), is a new marketplace for pre-built integrations and apps between Adobe solutions and third-party technologies (i.e., Google DDM, Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Tableau).

LeBron James has teamed up with Sprite to change the game off the court for four people via a social media contest.

By Kathy Gersch, executive VP, Kotter International