News

BELLEVUE, Wash. — Coinstar announced that Mitch Lowe has resigned as president of the company's DVD rental kiosk business, redbox.  Lowe has resigned to pursue entrepreneurial and other interests, and will continue to serve as president until a successor is named. Coinstar has commenced an external search to identify a new president of redbox.  

Birmingham, Ala. -- Books-A-Million confirmed it has submitted a bid to purchase, among other things, the inventory, fixtures, equipment, and leasehold interests for 30 Borders locations. Under the proposed bid, Books-A-Million will assume the leases for these locations and continue to operate these stores. The move comes as Borders Group, after winning court approval, begins to liquidate its business.

It is logical that Wal-Mart Stores Inc. president and CEO Mike Duke would top Supermarket News’ Power 50 list of the food industry’s most influential executives. The company sells more food, by a large margin, than anyone else, therefore a case could be made that Duke, or whoever is CEO of Walmart, should top the publication’s list each year.

Kudos to Borders for not forgetting its most loyal customers as it begins the slow and painful process of shutting down operations.

MINNEAPOLIS — Supervalu announced that it has named Leon Bergmann as president of its independent business organization, reporting to Craig Herkert, CEO and president. He replaces Mark Anderson, who will be retiring from Supervalu later this summer.

Less than six months into her role as Walmart’s EVP global customer insights, Cindy Davis rocked the retail analytics world this week with news that Walmart would resume sharing sales data with Nielsen.

The development comes as Walmart is looking to do a better job of leveraging shopper insights as a means to grow sales and follows the creation in February of a new global customer insights team led by Davis. She previously served as EVP membership and marketing at Sam’s Club and joined the company in the fall of 2007.

Washington, D.C. – Back-to-school sales are expected to be flat this coming season, according to the 2011 Back-to-School survey, issued Thursday by the National Retail Federation and conducted by BIGresearch. The study showed that families with children in grades K-12 will spend an average of $603.63 on apparel, school supplies and electronics, a few dollars short of last year’s $606.40 average.

PLEASANTON, Calif. — Safeway Inc. reported net income of $145.8 million, or 41 cents per diluted share, for the second quarter of 2011 compared with $141.3 million, or 37 cents per diluted share for the second quarter of 2010.

The company reported that total sales increased 7.1% to $10.2 billion in the second quarter of 2011 from $9.5 billion in the second quarter of 2010. Identical-store sales, excluding fuel saw a 0.5% increase.