
Management

With shallow pockets but a deep commitment to promote "living wages," women's advocacy group UltraViolet has peppered Target with cheap location-focused online ads, challenging it to match Wal-Mart's promise of $10-an-hour base pay. The nonprofit advocacy group launched its campaign on Tuesday. With a budget of just $5,000, it purchased online ads that appear on the browsers of people surfing the web within an approximately 1,000-feet radius of three stores in Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Nebraska.
Target cut 1,700 people at its corporate offices in the Twin Cities on Tuesday, the largest downsizing of its headquarters staff ever. The retailer's top managers had set the company's employees on edge a week before by announcing plans to cut "several thousand" corporate jobs. On Tuesday, they lost no time in implementing their plan, with workers cut loose en masse.
Scott Jordan wants to save the in-flight catalog SkyMall, but right now the airlines aren't returning his calls, he told CNBC on Monday. SkyMall filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this year and Jordan, CEO of ScotteVest, plans to bid for its assets during an auction later this month. "SkyMall's value is entirely dependent, in my opinion, upon deals with all the airlines and unfortunately most if not all the airline contracts with SkyMall have expired or are up for renewal/renegotiation," he said in an interview with "Closing Bell."
A little more than a month after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, specialty women's apparel retailer Cache is throwing in the towel. Advisory and valuation services provider Great American Group, which won a bid for Cache's assets at a March 3 bankruptcy auction, has begun "going out of business" sales for all Cache's retail locations in the U.S., the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. The sale will offer significant discounts on the retailer's inventory of women's apparel and accessories. Select furniture, fixtures and equipment at stores, warehouses and corporate offices will also be for sale.
If the ability to throw a 100-mile-per-hour fastball sits at one end of the human capital spectrum, stocking shelves and swiping barcodes is at the opposite. But the U.S. economy gets on quite nicely with just a few dozen ace pitchers, while it takes vast stadiums of cashiers — and no small amount of investment in human capital — to keep things humming. A modest bidding war has broken out among the retailers that hire from the bottom of the labor pool, buoyed in part by improving sales.
Online retailer Etsy, known for its handmade crafts, filed documents on Wednesday confirming plans by the Brooklyn-based company to go public. Etsy didn't say how many shares it intends to sell in the offering, but said it seeks to raise at least $100 million worth selling its stock, which will then trade under the ticker symbol "ETSY." The offering is being handled by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and boutique investment bank Allen & Company, according to Etsy's filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Target plans to invest billions of dollars this year streamlining operations, opening more small stores and creating a product mix designed to appeal to a younger, broader consumer demographic. The retailer will also cut several thousand jobs in the next two years as part of a cost-savings plan, Target managers said at a meeting Tuesday with financial analysts and investors. The company didn't say how many of its employees will be cut, although most are expected to be at the company's Minneapolis base, where it employs 13,000.
In January, Gap announced it would scrap the role of creative director, and with it, the job of Rebekka Bay. It was, frankly, a bummer for anyone nostalgic for the days when Gap was a source for true basics: trend-proof pocket tees, blue jeans, cotton sweaters, and even, yes, khakis. Bay, who came to Gap in 2007 from the H&M-owned label Cos, had vowed to restore the retailer to its clean, casual heyday. But, as Lauren Sherman pointed out at Fashionista, Gap's merchandising structure has muddied the creative direction of leaders such as Bay in the stores.
Trading was halted Monday in Lumber Liquidators after its shares dropped more than 20 percent following a CBS report that the company sold flooring with higher levels of formaldehyde than permitted under California's health and safety standards. The trading was halted for pending news. The stock had fallen 24.8 percent before the market opened Monday. The "60 Minutes" piece on Sunday said it tested Lumber Liquidators’ flooring in Virginia, Florida, Texas, Illinois and New York for levels of formaldehyde, a cancer-causing chemical.
Online retailer Nasty Gal is gearing up for its brick-and-mortar moment and has brought in former Apple retail boss Ron Johnson to help guide the way. Johnson is leading a $16 million investment in the Los Angeles-based company and joining the women retailer's board of directors, founder Sophia Amoruso told Re/code. Johnson was the mastermind of Apple's retail strategy and then held the CEO role at J.C. Penney in a tumultuous stint. He's now CEO of a yet-to-launch e-commerce startup called Enjoy.