News

In celebration of seven straight years winning "Highest in Customer Satisfaction with Home Improvement Retail Stores" in the J.D. Power Home Improvement Retailer Satisfaction Study, Ace Hardware is kicking off its first-ever J.D. Power Award Neighborhood Tour across the country.

President Obama in his State of the Union address last night said he plans to sign an executive order increasing the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 per hour for workers on new government contracts and asked Congress to approve the same increase for all workers — and the National Retail Federation is not happy.

NRF president and CEO Matthew Shay issued a response ahead of the president’s address.

Burlington, Mass. – Demandware has acquired privately-held Mainstreet Commerce, a provider of cloud-based order management solutions. Demandware hopes the combination of its enterprise-class commerce platform and Mainstreet Commerce’s distributed order management solution will simplify order orchestration between online and in-store shopping processes; optimize store and Web inventory; and enable retailers to deliver a “buy anywhere, fulfill anywhere” consumer experience.

Herman G. Rowland Sr., Chairman of the Board for Jelly Belly Candy Co., is the recipient of the first ISM Lifetime Achievement Award.

ISM, a trade show of confectionery and snack products, honored Rowland with the show's first award to kick off this year's show.

Cincinnati -- The Kroger Co. said it has completed its acquisition of Harris Teeter Supermarkets for about $2.5 billion. Under the terms of the merger agreement, Harris Teeter shareholders will receive $49.38 per share of Harris Teeter common stock.

Plans for the fragrance division of Marc Jacobs to open a pop-up in New York City’s SoHo neighborhood are not terribly unusual. But the type of currency the shop will accept is.

The Daisy Marc Jacobs Tweet Shop, which will be open during New York Fashion Week, from Feb. 7 to 9, will trade in social currency instead of money.

New York -- Modell’s Sporting Goods has deployed cutting-edge technology in its Times Square flagship to welcome Super Bowl XLVIII fans. The sporting goods retailer has installed a virtual image of CEO Mitchell Modell to personally greet customers. The image is provided via Tensator’s “Virtual Assistant” digital signage solution, which creates the illusion of a real person.
 

Retailer and CPG companies’ usage of Facebook to engage with customers helped propel the 10-year-old social media platform to record levels of usage, sales and profitability in the fourth quarter.

Facebook said its daily active users increased 22% to 757 million while mobile daily active users increased 49% to 556 million. Those who used Facebook on a monthly basis increased 16% to 1.23 billion and those who did so monthly via a mobile device totaled 945 million.