Management

Barnes & Noble has a new CEO, its fourth in the last four years. The bookstore chain said on Thursday it had named its operations chief of five months, Demos Parneros, to be its new chief executive. The hiring comes eight months after Barnes & Noble ousted Ron Boire not even a year into his tenure, saying…

Wal-Mart said its recently launched startup investment arm, Store No. 8, has hired Jenny Fleiss as the chief executive of its first portfolio company. Fleiss will run code eight, a startup that will develop personalized, one-to-one shopping experiences. Fleiss is the co-founder and former head of business development of Rent the Runway, a designer fashion rental…

Sears Holdings Corp. named its second finance chief in less than a year last Friday, as the struggling department store chain updated investors on its restructuring plan. The Hoffman Estates, Ill.-based company named Rob Riecker finance chief effective immediately. Riecker was previously controller and head of capital markets activities, and has been with Sears since 2005.…

Weight Watchers has named Mindy Grossman, CEO of home shopping retailer HSN, to serve as the next chief executive officer at the diet company. On Wednesday, Weight Watchers said Grossman would be appointed to the joint roles of president and CEO, effective in July. She will also join the company's board of directors. Grossman served as…

Amazon.com will add another 100,000 full-time jobs over the next 18 months, company founder and CEO Jeff Bezos proudly announced earlier this year. The new jobs are great, but a closer inspection shows Amazon may simply be adding back jobs it helped kill off. For example, Amazon played a large role in eliminating more than 50,000 jobs…

J.Crew is cutting 250 jobs, it announced on Tuesday. The move comes as the specialty apparel retailer embarks on several strategic changes. As part of a reorganization, J.Crew will reduce headcount by approximately 150 full-time and 100 open positions, mostly from its corporate headquarters. J.Crew expects to realize about $30 million of annualized pre-tax savings by downsizing…

The question below was included in the cover story of Total Retail’s Winter issue, Top Women in Retail 2017. Among the questions asked, “Do you have any mentors in the retail industry?” Here are select answers to that question from some of this year’s honorees.

Best Buy is reorganizing its marketing team in an effort to make it more streamlined and cost effective. Three of the company’s top marketing executives have left, and the retailer is folding marketing responsibilities into merchandising. Best Buy's former Chief Marketing Officer Greg Revelle and Mary Lou Kelley, president of e-commerce, have both left the…

Casey Carl, the executive charged with spearheading innovation at Target Corp., is leaving the company as CEO Brian Cornell refocuses efforts on the core business and tries to find quick ways to revitalize stores amid falling sales. Carl has pushed Target to think about the direction of retail beyond the next few years, but the retailer…

Teen apparel retailer rue21 announced last week that it's closing 400 of its 1,200 stores around the country. On Saturday afternoon, the company posted a note on its Facebook page confirming that it’s trimming its brick-and-mortar locations. “It’s true — we are closing some stores,” the post said. “It was a difficult but necessary decision. But…