“How Alibaba Plans to Help U.S. Exporters” at WSJ. “MR. BERMAN: What U.S. small business products would make sense in the Chinese market? MR. MA: Last year we helped Washington state. We sold 150 tons of cherries. We sell Alaska seafood. We sold 80 tons of nuts to China. There are so many farm products here that can be sold to China; because of the pollution, people cannot have good quality products.” Read the full interview (Subscription)

 

Trending: Who is Alex from Target? by Emilee Speck at Orlando Sentinel. “The red-shirted Target employee can now add internet-famous to his resume. Twitter users began photoshopping memes, creating Tumblrs, Twitter handles and nonstop tweeting about “Alex from Target.” Thanks to the power of the internet “Official Alex from Target” now has more than 174,000 followers, according to @acl163’s bio.” Read more

 

“Walgreen aims to stop disclosures in lawsuit” by Ellen Jean Hirst at Chicago Tribune. “Make no mistake: This lawsuit is brought by a bitter former executive who, after he was told he would not become the CFO of the combined Walgreens-Alliance Boots company, and only after he was subsequently told that he would not be allowed to continue as the Chief Financial Officer (‘CFO’) of Walgreens, has lashed out with a series of threats, untruths and half-truths” Walgreen wrote.” Read more

 

“Amazon isn’t discontinuing its India operations; is likely to expand further” by Richa Sharma at Economic Times. “We, at Business Insider India, spoke to Amazon’s officials to find out the truth and were surprised when they rubbished the report and cited that this piece of news is nothing, but an egregious example of misreporting.” Read more

 

NY Times: “Stung Last Year, Retailers and Shippers Retool for the Holiday Season” by Rachel Abrams. “Given the expected spike in online sales, the big question will be whether retailers and carriers can plan well enough to avoid the same problems. “Is it a redux of last year, or did we learn any lessons to fix the problem?” said Sucharita Mulpuru, an analyst with Forrester, who wrote the report predicting this year’s holiday sales.” Read more

 

“Lowe’s Swarmed by Bee Activist Group on Halloween” by Mark Koba at CNBC. “”We’ve been reaching out to Lowe’s for the past year on this issue,” said Friends of the Earth’s Tiffany Finck-Haynes. “Finally in May of this year they did contact us but said they would follow the Environmental Protection Agency’s guidelines on pesticides.” In an email to CNBC, Karen Cobb, manager of corporate public relations at Lowe’s, reiterated what it told Friends of the Earth, adding “it is concerned about the loss of bees and other pollinators”. Read more

 

Amazon: 37% of Global Workplace is Female by Rachel Lerman at Puget Sounds Bus. Journal. “Amazon followed many of its fellow tech companies Friday and released its diversity statistics. The report didn’t bring many surprises — the workforce is mostly male, and mostly white. But it does have significantly more women in its ranks than Microsoft and Google.” Read more

 

Walmart: 65%+ of Customers Have Smart Phones by Kim Souza at The City Wire. “Stores will feature more “retailtainment” events like Frozen parties, or trade-in and up promotions for gamers like the early release of Call of Duty. Wal-Mart said retailtainment and store events are left up to store managers, although the corporate office does make broad recommendations which are followed about 80% of the time.” Read more

 

“Dollar General extends its tender offer for Family Dollar to Dec. 31” by Jennifer Thomas at Charlotte Bus. Journal. Read more

 

“Get ready for video ads in your Instagram feed” by Keith Wagstaff at CNBC. “Not seeing them? That’s not a mistake. As with Instagram’s photo ads, which launched last fall, each one is targeted at a specific audience. Ads from L’Oreal will launch in a week or two, a company spokesperson said, with more expected in the future.” Read more

 

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