News

New York City -- Jesta I.S. said Wednesday it has partnered with Americaneagle.com to offer a pre-integrated front-end e-commerce solution designed to deliver an integrated and comprehensive merchandising suite that allows retailers to rapidly deploy a solid merchandising infrastructure and a comprehensive e-commerce solution.

“Increasingly, we are seeing a higher demand for a full end-to-end integrated e-commerce solution,” said Jerry Boduch, director of business development at Americaneagle.com.

Roseville, Calif. -- Retail life cycle price optimization solution-provider Revionics said it has partnered with K-VA-T Food Stores for a price optimization solution.

K-VA-T will deploy Revionics  Price Optimization and Revionics Promotion Optimization, which includes Revionics' category planning tools, weekly price maintenance capabilities and optimized prices across all pricing zones, each week.  

Green Bay, Wis. -- Shopko Stores Operating Co. said Wednesday that Shopko and Pamida will merge to create one of the largest U.S. retailers focused on serving smaller and rural communities. The combined entity will have nearly 350 locations in 22 states and plans to accelerate new store growth in the second half of 2012 and beyond. Financial details of the merger, expected to close in mid-February, were not disclosed.

New York City -- A report released Wednesday by the International Council of Shopping Centers and Goldman Sachs said that post-Christmas shopping surges propelled U.S. same-store sales significantly forward during the week after Christmas.

Customer experience analytics firm ForeSee today released the results of their seventh annual Holiday E-Retail Satisfaction Index, and Target was ranked 29.

The difficulties Target experienced with the relaunch of its website early last fall and subsequent fall off in traffic couldn’t have come at a worse time, as total retail online sales hit new highs during the holiday season.

Online sales increased 15% to $35.3 billion From Nov. 1 through Dec. 25 compared with the same time period the prior year, according to the online measurement firm comScore.

Veteran merchandising and supply chain executive Rick Maguire has announced plans to retire from his current position as SVP supply chain at Target Canada effective June 15, according to an internal company announcement.

The move caps a 27-year career at Target that began in 1985 when Maguire joined the company as an inventory manager. It was only a year ago that Maguire was named to his current position and prior to that he spent 16 year as an SVP merchandise planning.

The analysts at Morningstar combed through 330 consumer sector companies and came up with a list of 10 names that comprise the firm’s new “Consumers’ Choice List. 

Target chairman, president and CEO Gregg Steinhafel drew a proverbial line in the sand last month when he noted the company’s same-stores sales performance in December would be better than the company’s modest showing in November.

Actually, what he said was, “For the month of December, our comparable-store sales results will compare the five weeks ending Dec. 31, 2011 to the five weeks ended Jan. 1, 2011. We expect a low to mid single-digit increase in Target’s comparable-store sales for this period, stronger than our November performance.”

There were no new surprises during November regarding prices at Target and Walmart.