OPERATIONS / SUPPLY CHAIN

Walter Loeb: Retailers must restructure in 2016
Restructuring will be key to retail survival in 2016, according to veteran retail analyst Walter Loeb, who is worried about the future profitability of many leading traditional retailers as the year gets underway. “They are losing sales productivity in their stores while expenses rise and management bureaucracy grows,” Loeb wrote in an article on Forbes.com. [Forbes.com]
Fashioning a Winning Strategy: The Top 5 Trends for Apparel Retailers in 2016
The resounding priority among retailers has been accelerating their integrated omnichannel offering – which has meant everything from merging online and store teams to measuring the in-store impact of digital campaigns. Recent innovations include mobile app and in-store technologies, multichannel fulfillment solutions, and coordinated cross-channel promotions. These kinds of initiatives will continue to be top of mind in 2016, particularly as consumer expectation for a seamless and personalized experience – and deep discounts – continues to grow.

Lowe’s enter home security business

Lowe’s Iris brand smart home solution is gaining new security functionality for those customers willing to pay a monthly fee.
What Best Buy will be looking for at CES

The massive consumer technology show known as CES is underway in Las Vegas and retailers in attendance will trolling an area of the 2.4 million-sq.-ft. show floor called Eureka Park in hopes of finding the next big thing.
Target names HR exec to lead stores

Janna Potts has been named chief stores officer at Target, filling a position occupied for the past five years by Tina Tyler.

Target elevated Potts to the role of executive VP and chief stores officer, reporting to COO John Mulligan, after she previously served as senior VP of human resources focused on stores and distribution. Potts is a Target veteran who joined the company’s former Mervyn’s division in 1989. During her 27 year career she held leadership roles in stores, operations and human resources, according to the company.
Supermarket chain names new CEO

Photo: Pete Van Helden has been named chief executive of Stater Bros. Markets
Aptos board gains industry experience

Retail business industry veteran Lawrence Jackson has been named to the board of directors of cloud-based enterprise retail technology provider Aptos Inc. (formerly Epicor Retail Solutions).
Start-up offers retailers new ways to resell, recycle, donate returned goods

A new start-up, Optoro, is offering retailers alternative ways to sell their returned goods via a software platform that tracks returns, assesses, which channel is the most effective for each returned item, and routes products to those channels. While most retailers typically recover only about 20% to 40% of the retail cost of returned goods, Optoro helps companies recoup 50% to 70% of the cost, according to a report by the New York Times.
Study: FedEx beats UPS in on-time deliveries

FedEx on-time performance went up this holiday season while UPS did not fare quite as well.

According to new data from package tracking provider ShipMatrix Inc., FedEx met its guarantees of one-, two- and three-day holiday deliveries 97.8% of the time in 2015. This marked an improvement from 97.3% in 2014 and 95.4% in 2013.
Report: Samsung Pay eyes new frontier

A planned expansion of Samsung Pay is the latest in a seemingly endless series of maneuvers made by mobile payment providers throughout 2015.

In an interview with Reuters, Thomas Ko, global co-manager of Samsung Pay, said U.S. consumers will be able to use the mobile wallet solution for online payments in 2016. In addition, Samsung will roll out Samsung Pay to a broader range of lower-priced phones in the U.S. in the coming year. Currently, it is only available as a built-in feature on the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge devices.