Tomorrow: Target CEO to present keynote at The Executives Club of Chicago “Join The Club on Tuesday, March 15 to hear Cornell share key insights and lessons learned, as Target transforms its business and adapts to the shifting consumer landscape.” See details / Read the release

 

Former Costco CEO Sinegal Pens Education Op-Ed with Daughter via Seattle Times. “…we urge Gov. Jay Inslee and our state elected leaders to prioritize our kids and invest in these crucial high-quality early learning programs this legislative session.” Read the Op-Ed

 

Fresh Market Shares Soar on Apollo Takeover Offer via CNBC. “Specialty grocery retailer Fresh Market said on Monday it agreed to be acquired by private equity firm Apollo Global Management for about $1.36 billion in cash. Shares of Fresh market surged more than 20 percent in premarket trading” Read more

 

Anchorage: Proposal to ban RV camping in Walmart parking lots dropped after outcry by Devin Kelly at Alaska Dispatch News. “Gray-Jackson said she personally received more than 150 emails about her proposal, almost all negative. She said the number of phone calls on the issue were among the most she’s received since she was elected.” Read more

 

Dick’s Sporting Goods CEO to deliver keynote address at the commencement ceremony of St. John Fisher College by Lori Gable at Rochester Business Journal. “Stack is a St. John Fisher alumnus. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in accounting in 1977.” Read more

 

Amazon’s most prolific reviewers: Meet the people whose lives revolve around rating products by Nathalie Olah at The Independent. “The most prolific reviewer in Amazon’s history, an American called Harriet Klausner, died last year. Submitting more than 31,000 reviews in just over 10 years, Ms Klausner, who lived in Atlanta, had become the target of a campaign to expose instances of suspected “supplier involvement”…(she) had been accused of selling free products as a secondary source of income, with books supposedly appearing on trading site half.com before their official release.” Read more

 

Instacart Slashes Pay Up to 63% For Grocery Couriers by Leena Rao at Fortune. Read more | WSJ article (subs.)

 

…Instacart says ads from General Mills, PepsiCo, and other consumer companies account for 15% of revenue by Ellen Huet at Bloomberg. “Instacart said it’s “profitable” in four cities, including its biggest two, San Francisco and Chicago. It said 40 percent of the company’s volume is profitable—meaning most orders still lose money.” Read more

 

Washington Post: The big business behind the adult coloring book craze by Sarah Halzack. “At Barnes & Noble, Walmart and Michaels, executives said the growing interest in adult coloring books has also prompted a surge in sales of a host of related art supplies. Indeed, Nielsen reports that total sales of colored pencils shot up 26.3 percent in 2015, a sharp increase compared to the previous three years, when growth ranged from 1.3 to 7.2 percent.” Read more

 

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Twin Cities 40 Under 40 2016 via Minneapolis/St.Paul Business Journal. “Melisa Lopez Franzen – A veteran of Target, she now runs her own PR firm and won a hotly contested race to represent Edina in the Minnesota Legislature.” See the full list

 

Amazon’s landmark spheres rising but have a long way to go by Marc Stiles at Puget Sound Business Journal. See the recent pics

 

JCP CEO Ellison Visits Houston with new EVP Joe McFarland See the Twitter pic

 

Target CIO Mike McNamara Q&A via A Bullseye View. “What were some of your favorite talks at the Forbes summit? Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff was brilliant. He explained how a group of monastics recently inspired him to put “mindfulness” rooms on each floor of Salesforce’s new office…Google’s Ben Fried and Intuit’s Atticus Tysen had a great talk about the challenges and thrills of being a CIO today.” Read more

 

GeekWire: Get ready for the next billion-dollar fight in the credit card industry. Two small merchants in Florida say the industry’s shift to chip-enabled credit cards has caused them a tenfold increase in fraud losses by Bob Sullivan. Read more

 

eBay Invites Some Sellers to List 600,000 Listings by Ina Steiner at eCommerceBytes. “One seller started a thread on the eBay boards wondering if eBay had been hacked due to the large number of free listings offered in the promotion.” Read more

 

Lane Bryant’s CMO Talks Barbie, Bodies and Branding by Adrianne Pasquarelli at Ad Age. “Re: rejected commercial: “Our plan is to keep the edit “as is,” we believe it’s a beautiful and appropriate expression of women’s bodies. We do plan to air this through our own media channels as well as through digital channels.” Read the Q&A

 

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