News

NEW YORK — Gap executives reaffirmed its commitment to reducing square footage at home, aggressive international expansion and online growth during a presentation at Gap Global Creative Center in New York City. Gap also revealed that its online-only Piperlime division will explore a store concept next year and is testing men’s apparel.

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Eastman Kodak Company announced that its Kodak Picture Kiosk software will now allow consumers to use images from Facebook to create photo products. The enhanced Facebook application is the flagship feature of the new Kodak Picture Kiosk software version 5.0 currently being rolled out to retailers worldwide, the company said.

Promotions during September saw mixed outcome with some retailers increasing the number of pages and inserts, while the rest decreased the volume of promotions. The contrasting promotional strategies among the retailers led to the overall change being minimal. 

Like August, the largest decrease was Lowes, which saw a 61% drop in number of number of pages per market and 54% decline in inserts per market. This was a result of Lowes not having promotions in the second and third week of both August and September.

MINNEAPOLIS — Target announced that has partnered with FishWish to help reach its goal selling only sustainable and traceable seafood in its stores by 2015. 

ST. LOUIS — Ralcorp Holdings announced that Robert Vitale will serve as CFO Post Holdings in conjunction with the previously announced separation of Ralcorp and the Post cereal business.  Vitale will join Post effective Nov. 1.

There will be no escaping the long arm of Walmart’s marketing efforts this holiday season as the retail reminds shoppers it has the lowest prices on the broadest assortment of merchandise. Chief merchandising office Duncan Mac Naughton is making sure of that, and on Wednesday he outlined all of the ways the company plans to communicate with shoppers in the months ahead.

Saving people money so they can live better is Walmart’s mission globally, now the company just has to convince shoppers worldwide that shopping at stores that offer an every day low price value proposition is the key to their prosperity.

Armonk, N.Y. -- Jewelry will be one of the brightest categories for U.S. retailers this holiday season, according to a new analytics-based forecast by IBM. Jewelry sales are set to hit $2.6 billion In November, up 7.7% over the year-ago period, IBM reported, and $5.4 billion in December, up 4% over last year.

Burlington, Mass. -- Demandware announced that Lush Cosmetics has selected the Demandware Commerce platform to power three new e-commerce storefronts in North America, including its U.S. English, Canadian English and Canadian French sites.

After evaluating several solutions, Lush felt the power of Demandware’s on-demand model would lessen the administrative requirements of its on-premise platform, while providing them with the freedom to custom-develop and support potential multi-site global deployments.

Pleasanton, Calif. -- Safeway reported a 6% rise in fiscal third-quarter profit amid stronger revenue from gasoline sales and cost control efforts. Net income rose to $130.2 million for the period ended Sept. 10, up from $122.8 million, or 33 cents per share, a year ago.

Revenue rose 7% to $10.06 billion, from $9.4 billion. Same-store sales, excluding fuel, rose 1.5%