DATATRAC

Personnel Updates

• Party City announced that CFO Michael A Correale has been named Executive VP, Chief Accounting Officer and Treasurer effective August 29, 2016, while Daniel J. Sullivan will become CFO.

• hhgregg announced that Robert Riesbeck, current Interim CEO and CFO, will assume the role of CEO permanently. The company will start their search for a CFO replacement.

• Target announced the hiring of Benjamin Cook as Senior VP of Global Logistics, Inventory Allocation and Replenishment.

• Walmart announced the departure of Chief Data Officer Venkat Achanta.

Industry Insight

• Amazon has become the world’s fourth largest public company with a market capitalization of $366.0 billion ranking behind Apple, Alphabet (Google) and Microsoft.

• At Home Group started trading on the New York Stock Exchange on August 4, 2016. At Home operates 115 locations in 29 states in the South and Midwest.

• BJ’s Wholesale Club has plans to replace most of their in-store food courts with Dunkin’ Donuts kiosks or shops.

• Dollar General announced the purchase of 41 Walmart Express locations.  The company has plans to relocate 40 of its existing locations into the acquired locations by October 2016. The relocated locations will have the DG16 layout which features more sales floor square footage and expanded meat and produce sections.

• Dollar Tree will eliminate 370 positions as part of a corporate restructuring following last year’s Family Dollar acquisition. Of the 370 positions being eliminated 100 are currently vacant at the Family Dollar store support center.

• Hastings Entertainment announced the company is going out of business. The company filed Chapter 11 in June, 2016 in hopes of finding a buyer. On July 23^rd, 2016 the 123 superstores started going out of business sales.

• Sam’s Club’s new location in Columbia, SC will be the company’s first location to offer ‘Scan & Go shopping.’ This new store feature will allow members to scan UPC codes as they shop and pay via their mobile device, enabling a faster checkout process.

• Tuesday Morning opened two locations with new prototype sizes: an expanded location in Dallas, TX at the Preston Shopping Center and a new location in Plano, TX at Parker Central Shopping Center.

Mergers and Acquisitions

• GameStop acquired three AT&T mobility banners: Cellular World, Midwest Cellular and Red Skye Wireless totaling 507 wireless units. GameStop now has 1,421 wireless store holdings out of the 7,117 total global locations. The company is AT&T’s largest authorized retailer.

• Michaels purchased the rights to Hancock Fabrics’ brand and intellectual property from the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware for $1.3 million.

• Walmart will acquire Jet.com for $3 billion dollars and $300 million in Walmart shares. With the acquisition, Walmart hopes to expand their e-commerce ability to reach more customers and to be able to better compete with Amazon. The deal is expected to close by the end of 2016.

Real Estate

• Office Depot plans to close an additional 300 stores in the next three years in an effort to cut cost by $250 million by the end of 2018. The company also plans to expand their “store of the future” format by having a total of 24 stores by the end of 2016 and 100 stores by end of 2017. The new format is approximately 15,000 square feet in size.

• Petco announced the opening of four stores in August, with one new location, two relocations and one remodeled location. These openings are part of the company’s growth plan for 2016 which includes 31 new Petco locations and one new Unleashed by Petco location.

• Target plans to open 14 locations under its smaller format this year. This fall, plans call for new locations opening in Manhattan, downtown Brooklyn and Queens, as well as Long Island and New Jersey.