Management

Gap says the president of its Old Navy brand has resigned, but the company also has secured a former merchandising employee to serve as a consultant to its struggling namesake brand. Tom Wyatt will leave Old Navy Feb. 3. The company named two senior executives to assume his duties while the company searches for a permanent replacement.

The National Retail Federation's Annual Convention & Expo wrapped up yesterday with a roundtable discussion on leadership. Lending their expert advice were seasoned retail leaders Stephen Sadove, chairman and CEO of Saks, who moderated the discussion; Marty Albertson, chairman of Guitar Center; Brian Devine, chairman of PETCO; Angela Ahrendts, CEO of Burberry; and Brenda Malloy, managing director and global retail practice leader, Russell Reynolds Associates.

Charming Shoppes announced that Elizabeth Crystal has joined Lane Bryant as senior vice president and chief marketing officer. Crystal will develop and lead the brand positioning, marketing and advertising strategies for the Lane Bryant and Cacique brands.

The CEO of Winn-Dixie is stepping down as the Florida-based supermarket chain merges with Bi-Lo. CEO Peter Lynch told employees in a letter that he'll stay up to another 120 days.

Belk will soon have new capabilities to improve customer satisfaction across its 303 stores in 16 states by using solutions from Teradata. The department store has selected multiple Teradata Data Warehouse Appliances and the Teradata Retail Logical Data Model to build a new integrated database-driven analytics environment.

Best Buy's failure to fulfill many online orders in time for Christmas exposed ongoing problems that haven't been resolved. Best Buy is often a target of complaints about late and unfulfilled orders and is "the only major store who routinely has these kinds of issues," says Brad Wilson, founder of BradsDeals.com.

Rue La La laid off 65 employees in Boston and other locations as its parent company Kynetic plans to fold sister property SmartBargains into Rue La La. While SmartBargains sells department store items, Rue La La sells upscale branded items to members only at a significant discount during 2-day sales events, called "flash sales."

An Osaka department store's poorly translated sale sign was one of the classic English gaffes of our time. But the funny signs were quickly taken down after the internet freaked out about them. The store, Gallerie, caught wind of the global snicker in the final days of the sale.

The thousands of temporary workers who lost their jobs after the holidays dampened the weekly unemployment report. But at least one retailer is hiring now. Home Depot said it would add 70,000 workers this spring, its biggest season. Last year about half that number were hired permanently as cashiers, sales, lot and garden staffers. Home Depot employs about 300,000 workers overall.

Even without Kim Kardashian starring in its next Super Bowl spot, Skechers continues to raise a super ruckus. A greyhound protection group will announce that it's collected almost 50,000 signatures from folks who want Skechers to dump its new Super Bowl spot — before it airs — because it was shot at a race track in Arizona that the group claims mistreats greyhounds.