Personnel Updates
• Jo-Ann Stores Inc. (87) announced the departure of Jill Soltau who has resigned as president and CEO. Wade Miquelon will serve as Interim President and CEO, while continuing in his current role as Exec VP and CFO.
• PETCO Animal Supplies Inc. (27) announced it has appointed Tariq Hassan as Chief Marketing Officer.
• QVC, Inc. (75) named Jeffrey Davis as the company’s new CFO.
Mergers and Acquisitions
• Walmart Stores Inc. announced that it is acquiring Eloquii Design Inc., a plus-size, trend-driven women’s apparel brand, and its 5 store locations.
• Party City Holdco Inc. entered into an agreement to acquire a master franchise group representing 21 franchise stores in Minnesota, North Dakota and Texas.
• Staples Inc. has agreed to acquire office-supplies company Essendant Inc.
Industry Insight
• Amazon.com Inc. has opened a new store, called Amazon 4-star. The location only sells items that are rated 4 stars or above, are top sellers, or are new and trending on Amazon’s website. The store is located in New York City’s SoHo neighborhood.
Real Estate
• Amazon.com Inc. has introduced its first Amazon Go concept outside of its hometown. The newest 2,000 sq. ft. Amazon Go unit has debuted in Chicago. Additional stores in San Francisco and New York remain in the works. Amazon plans to open 10 locations by the end of 2018, about 50 locations in major metro areas in 2019 and then up to 3,000 new Amazon Go stores by 2021.
• AT&T Inc. announced plans to add 1,000 new stores. In addition to standard retail locations, AT&T plans to open pop-up stores in apartment buildings, condos and other locations. The company plans to launch a total of 100 pop-ups this year.
• Dollar Tree Stores Inc. plans to close Family Dollar’s store support centers in Matthews, North Carolina and Chesapeake, Virginia. These operations will be relocated to Dollar Tree’s newly-completed office tower in Chesapeake. The consolidation will be complete by fall 2019.
Technology News
• Walmart Stores Inc. announced a new collaboration with PayPal that enables customers to load cash or withdraw funds from their PayPal mobile app while shopping in its stores. The service has a $3 fee per transaction.
Just because we don’t mention it here doesn’t mean it didn’t happen – or we didn’t capture it. In the past four weeks, we’ve updated more than 407 companies in the Discount, Dollar, & Specialty Stores PLUS Database, with many of those companies’ records updated at multiple points.
