NLRB slaps down Walmart dress code by Sean Higgins at Washington Examiner. “Walmart violated its employees’ rights when it instituted a restrictive new dress code last year that union activists said was intended to prevent workers from wearing labor insignia on their clothes, a National Labor Relations Board administrative law judge has ruled. The judge ordered the retail giant to rescind the dress code at all of its stores.” Read more

 

Sears 1Q loss narrows but sales slump continues at AP. “Sales at Sears domestic locations open at least a year dropped 14.5 percent, while sales at Kmart domestic locations open at least a year declined 7 percent.” Read more

 

175,000 doses of narcotics stolen in Baltimore riots by Kevin Johnson at USA Today. Read more

 

NY Post: Walmart CEO ignores laid-off employees’ pleas to get jobs back by Lisa Fickenscher. “But that’s more than Greg Penner, the newly appointed chairman of Walmart, offered. The son-in-law of outgoing chairman Rob Walton “ran away from us and kept going until he reached a tunnel,” Luna said, adding that “security guards stopped us.” Read more

 

Teri L. List-Stoll to join DICK’S Sporting Goods as Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer “Prior to joining the Company, she was employed by Kraft Foods Group from September 2013 to May 2015. “ Read the release

 

***A message from Mobee’s ‘Bees’: Mobee has over 350,000 GPS tracked, Smartphone enabled ‘Bees’ located within 5 miles of every retail store in the USA. We detect supply chain issues quickly and issue fix alerts to remedy the problem in hours not months. Our “Supply Chain Fix Alerts” have resulted in post-alert sales increases of up to +35% by getting displays up and product on shelf. How Mobee works video. Contact dowdy@getmobee.com to request a free pilot.

 

President of Lord & Taylor & Hudson Bay in NY Times Q&A “We’re in a lot of meetings, and they’re very purposeful and we have agendas. If somebody isn’t listening and following the trail of where we are in the conversation, I get annoyed. When we run a meeting, we expect people to speak up, and if they don’t understand something, they should ask about it.” Read the Q&A

 

Walgreens gets European makeover with Scottish exec by Ameet Sachdev at Chicago Tribune via Seattle Times. “Scotland native Alex Gourlay, 55, is in charge of the drugstore chain’s nearly 8,300 stores across the country…Under Gourlay, Walgreens plans to aggressively reduce costs in its U.S. pharmacy business by closing stores and removing layers of management, pay more attention to shopping patterns using data collected from its loyalty card and sell more beauty products.” Read more

 

Walmart’s CEO calls on staff to be like Han Solo, other Star Wars rebels by Phil Wahba at Fortune. Read more

 

Blue Nile opens first stand-alone store in Long Island mall by Angel Gonzalez at Seattle Times. “The so-called “Webroom,” a 325-square-foot space with a half-dozen staffers, grew out of the Seattle retailer’s experiments with temporary counters inside a couple of Nordstrom stores. It also draws on the experience accumulated by placing booths at wedding shows in China — wildly popular fairs that helped drive a 50 percent yearly increase in Blue Nile’s sales there.” Read more

 

Reese Witherspoon Does Legally Blonde’s “Bend and Snap” at Walmart Event at Us Magazine. “Bend, and you snap, and you stock!” Witherspoon exclaimed…The Draper James designer wasn’t the only star in attendance. Witherspoon was also joined by Carol Burnett, Mariah Carey, Rod Stewart, Brian McKnight, and Drew Barrymore, who was on hand to support her Flower cosmetics.” Read more / See the video

 

Tipsheet Extra

Rabid bat bites woman at Albuquerque Walmart

Tesco reclaims top spot in Ireland

Behind the Scenes With Carrie Underwood at Her Calia Fitness Line Shoot

Amazon is hiring a dream team to build its first PC game

Eataly Confirms Hack

Here are the top 10 most concentrated ‘Millennial markets’

Read Tipsheet Extra Stories

 

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Eye-on-Retail Tipsheet is created early every weekday morning and read by retail merchants and executives worldwide. We love data, earnings reports, executive presentations and stories off the beaten path that get at what’s really happening in the world of retail. See our website at www.eyeonretail.net