News

Giant Eagle is making a push into Indiana with a Market District concept and GetGo, a convenience store, planned just outside of Indianapolis, according to published reports.

According to reports, it will be the first Giant Eagle store in the state, and additional stores in the metro area might follow.

“We are thrilled to bring our Market District and GetGo concepts to Carmel and greater Indianapolis,” Giant Eagle CEO Laura Karet said in a statement. “We are also actively evaluating opportunities for additional locations.”

Atlanta – The Home Depot has acquired Houston-based window coverings retailer Blinds.com. As The Home Depot continues to implement its interconnected retail strategy, the company will work with Blinds.com to expand its technology into Homedepot.com and the company's stores with the goal of improving the entire end-to-end buying process for window coverings.

The Blinds.com management team and staff will remain intact at its headquarters in Houston. The acquisition closed Jan. 23 and terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Although Starbucks’ profit in the first quarter rose a better-than-expected 25% to $540.7 million from $432 million in the year-ago period, same-store sales missed Wall Street expectations.

Same-store sales rose 5%, beneath Wall Street expectations of 5.9%. Revenue for the quarter ended Dec. 29, 2013 rose 12% to $4.24 billion from $3.79 billion.

Same-store sales in the Americas region also rose 5%, while analysts had expected a 6.4% increase.

As senior editor of Chain Store Age it is my pleasure to welcome you to the first edition of our new Customer Disruption e-newsletter. Every other Thursday, I will be presenting you with content from the Chain Store Age website and magazine highlighting how retailers are using technology to provide customers with the type of seamless, personalized shopping experience they have come to expect.

Levi Strauss & Co. has named Craig Nomura as EVP and president of global retail, effective Feb. 3. He will report to president and CEO Chip Bergh.

Seattle – Starbucks Corporation’s profit in the first quarter rose 25% to $540.7 million from $432 million in the year-ago period, better than analysts expected.

Revenue for the quarter ended Dec. 29, 2013 rose 12% to $4.24 billion from $3.79 billion. Same-store sales rose 5%, beneath Wall Street expectations of 5.9%.

Same-store sales in the Americas region also rose 5%, while analysts had expected a 6.4% increase.

The Michigan Retailers Association (MRA) said that Michigan's retail industry had a poor holiday shopping season thanks to damaging winter storms and “outdated government policies that favor out-of-state online companies.”

Retailers posted only a 0.1% average increase over last holiday season, according to the Michigan Retail Index, a joint project of MRA and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

Atlanta -- Global Payments Inc. will acquire Payment Processing, Inc. (PayPros). PayPros, based in California, is a provider of fully-integrated payment solutions for 58,000 small-to-medium sized retailers in the U.S.