Workers at Bloomingdale’s New York flagship store narrowly avoid a strike by Julia Horowitz at CNN Money. “The department store will no longer require sales clerks to prepare online orders for in-store pickups, and managers cannot ask workers to leave their departments if it could cause them to lose a sale.” Read more

 

Big 5 Sporting Goods Q1 Comp Sales +7.9% “…reflecting continued market share gains resulting from the closure of certain major competitors last year along with more favorable weather conditions than the prior year period. Sales comparisons also benefited from the calendar shift of the Easter holiday.” Press release

 

Etsy has ousted its CEO and is laying off 8 percent of its staff by Jason Del Rey at Recode. “The struggling online crafts marketplace is replacing longtime CEO Chad Dickerson with Josh Silverman, an Etsy board member who was previously CEO of Skype and eBay’s Shopping.com. The company is also laying off 80 employees.” Read more | Etsy press release

 

CR’s 100 Best Corporate Citizens (CVS #38, Gap #57, Best Buy #72, Target #94) Top 100 list

 

BJ’s Wholesale Club enlists JPMorgan to help find buyer by Josh Kosman at NY Post. “So far, no suitor is in advanced talks and the sale process is early, sources said. Amazon has expressed interest internally in buying BJ’s but is not in formal talks yet with the PE firms.” Read more

 

Judge strikes down city’s approval of a Hollywood Target — again by David Zahniser at LA Times. “A judge has delivered a humiliating new legal defeat to Los Angeles elected officials, striking down the city’s approval of a Hollywood Target shopping center for the second time in three years…The decision means that Target, which first filed an application to build the project in 2008, will continue to be prohibited from finishing construction.” Read more

 

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Why the Co-Founder of Rent the Runway Left Her Own Company to Join Walmart by Valentina Sarya at Fortune. “Code Eight is still in stealth mode, but Fleiss did tell Fortune a few things about the brand-new company:

It will have six employees as of next week.
Its headquarters are in New York City.
The idea behind it is to ” make shopping magical and delightful.”
The main product is a mobile, app-based experience.
It utilizes artificial intelligence and machine learning.
It’s not a fashion company.
It will offer a “premium” experience not targeted to Walmart’s regular customers.” Read more

 

Publix Announces Vice President of Government Relations “Currently, John Provenzano is Executive Director of the National Association of State Treasurers…Before joining NAST, he was government affairs director for Delta Air Lines.” Press release

 

Shoe Carnival Q1 Comp Sales -3.9% Press release

 

Could Walmart buy Wayfair? One analyst says it’d be a good match by Kelly J. O’Brien at Boston Business Journal. “The share price of Boston-based Wayfair Inc. was flirting with an all-time high on Tuesday after a Wall Street analyst argued that Wal-Mart Stores Inc. should buy the home furnishings e-retailer.” Read more

 

Ex-Nine West CIO Named Bon-Ton CIO Press release

 

Two buyout firms ‘actively exploring’ deal to buy Staples via NY Post. “Cerberus and Sycamore have emerged as the frontrunners, as other prospective buyers have become discouraged by the challenges Staples faces in shifting its business model from serving consumers to catering to companies, the sources added.” Read more

 

Retailers may prevail over banks in fight over limits on debit card transaction fees by Kayla Tausche at CNBC. “Language to repeal the Durbin Amendment, which assigns a limit to card swipe fees and the payment of those fees to the banks, has survived until now, but comments from the committee’s chairman, Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, have cast doubt on the repeal surviving much further.” Read more

 

Only one-third of American home values have recovered pre-recession peaks by Andrea Riquier at MarketWatch. Read more

 

Google and Amazon killed their Apple Watch apps and it went unnoticed for weeks by Natt Garun at The Verge. “Amazon: “There are a number of reasons we don’t think this is the right solution for our customers at this time,” a spokesperson told The Verge.” Read more

 

Ex-Walmart EVP was addicted to ‘more, faster, better’ before he turned his life around by Mike Pare at Times Free Press. “(John) Aden said he was introduced to a retired vice chairman of Wal-Mart, Don Soderquist, whom he described as that company’s “keeper of the culture.” “I said ‘Let’s talk about strategy.’ He said, ‘No, I want to talk about your [company] values.”‘ Read more

 

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