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The Mobile Marketing Association today highlighted its efforts and focus to minimize the cost, risk and time to market for consumer agencies, brands and retailers as they implement mobile marketing strategies. The initiative is designed to further the recent trend among major agencies, brands and retailers — including Ogilvy Interactive, Isobar and Best Buy — as they move their mobile budgets out of the R&D column and into their mainstream marketing programs.

Mildred Ellen Orton, who co-founded the Vermont Country Store with her husband, has died. Orton died at her home in Weston, Vt. last week at the age of 99. Her son, Lyman Orton, who now owns the mail order company with his three sons, says she did the paperwork and bookkeeping for more than 30 years for the company she and her husband, Vrest, started in 1946.

Already sold online, Athleta — owned by Gap Inc. — will open a 2,424-square-foot test store at Strawberry Village Center in Mill Valley, Calif., later this month, according to the company.

Import cargo volume at the nation’s major retail container ports is expected to be up 10 percent in May with double-digit increases expected into this fall as the U.S. economy improves, according to the monthly Global Port Tracker report released today by the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates.

Online-only catalogs today number 2000, up from 869 five years ago, reported MediaFinder.com, the largest online database of U.S. and Canadian periodicals, including data on 12,431 catalogs. During the same time period, print catalogs declined from 3,836 to 1,158, while the number of catalogs appearing in both print and online formats increased from 6,661 to 8,640. Over the last five years, gift/card catalogs experienced the most significant growth from 293 to 370; while home and food catalogs increased from 283 to 355 and 301 to 343, respectively. Manufacturing catalogs showed the steepest decline from 355 to 272.

Swarovski, the world-famous Austrian luxury brand, synonymous with crystal glass, is immensely popular for its jewelry and collectible figurines around the world, including Korea. In recent years, Swarovski has been leading the do-it-yourself (DIY) trend in Korea with its ``Create Your Style with Swarovski Elements'' program. The Web site www.create-your-style.kr has attracted over 6,000 members since it was launched last year, but Oh admitted the crystal DIY market is still relatively small compared to the U.S. and Japan.

Vermont's Green Mountain Cofffee Roasters agreed to buy a California coffee company. Green Mountain says the deal for Diedrich Coffee Inc., of Irvine, Calif., is worth about $300 million.

The man who wants to end Saturday mail delivery is pressed for time. The way Postmaster General John E. Potter sees it, he has less than six months to convince Congress and the nation of the urgent need to retool the U.S. Postal Service for the 21st century. By fall, the Postal Service won't have enough money to make payroll, Potter predicts. But big customers, regulators, lawmakers and organized labor still have to be won over. Which might help explain Potter's stark assessment. He wants Congress to roll back a law requiring the Postal Service to prepay retiree health benefits. But he also wants the flexibility to change the business model -- by dropping Saturday deliveries, replacing post offices with outposts in suburban supermarkets and cutting hundreds of thousands of jobs through attrition.

Nike Chief Executive Mark Parker is taking the brand in a new direction, targeting overseas expansion — and not just with the Nike "swoosh" logo. Last week he set the ambitious goal of increasing sales 40 percent, to $27 billion, by 2015. To achieve that while Nike sales growth in the U.S. is slowing, he's betting on such markets as China, India and Brazil, and on their burgeoning middle classes.

Electronics chain hhgregg had been content to methodically grow from its Midwest roots until the recession hit — and then the retailer became more aggressive than ever. While other retail chains were toppling all around it, Indianapolis-based hhgregg turned economic malaise into opportunity and began scooping up bargain leases. It opened about two dozen stores during the past year, with plans to open as many as 45 more new stores in the coming year.