Retail Stores

Best Buy is pulling the plug on a rent-to-own pilot program it launched last year with Rent-A-Center. Dow Jones reports that the Richfield, Minn.-based retailer pulled Rent-A-Center kiosks from a Chicago-area store and confirmed that Best Buy wouldn't pursue the program any further. Rent-A-Center executives said in March that the program was going well. Best Buy started the rent-to-own program last summer.

Sears Holdings Corp. will add 52 Scrubology stores -- a "store-within-a-store" that sells apparel and footwear for health professionals inside Kmart and Sears locations  -- by the end of this month.

On Monday, Amazon, the Seattle-based online retailer launched AmazonSupply.com, a site that sells such products as radiation detectors for environmental testing, industrial cutting tools, janitorial and sanitation materials and office supplies.

In its ongoing attempt to win over women at every step of their fitness journey, Under Armour is introducing a goal-setting Web site called “What’s Beautiful.” Involving Twitter and Facebook, the site is “a competition to redefine the female athlete,” with an end result of three new “faces” for Under Armour, as well as seven brand ambassadors. 

H&M will open in Mexico City, Mexico in the autumn of 2012. 

German entrepreneur Rainer Schulz was an old hand at setting up fast-fashion stores across Europe under such nameplates as Forever 18 and Colloseum. Three years ago, the veteran retailer ventured across the ocean to expand his clothing store empire to Southern California. In October 2010, Schulz opened his first My Fashion Club store in Canoga Park, Calif. Three more California stores — in Glendale, Northridge and Bakersfield — followed. But all four stores are closing after Schulz, 52, died when the Cessna 750 Citation X corporate jet he was piloting crashed on March 1 in Egelsbach, Germany. 

Proving investors still have a healthy appetite for a branded retail stock with potential for growth, luxury luggage and travel goods maker Tumi Holdings Inc. shares jumped almost 50 percent in its initial public offering last week.

The iPad, iPhone, iPod, Mac and plenty of other Apple products are no doubt great devices, but the greatest invention of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs may well have been the Apple retail store. The way they're designed, organized and run has played a part in elevating the status of gadgets themselves.

eBay's revenue grew 29 percent in the first quarter year-over-year to $3.3 billion, and net income grew 20 percent to $570 million. The company released first quarter 2012 earnings on Wednesday, and eBay CEO John Donahoe sounded upbeat on a post-earnings conference call with Wall Street analysts. Donahoe said eBay's PayPal unit was focused on innovation and the eBay Marketplaces business had turned the corner, shifting from "defense" to "offense." He also said there would be a "steady stream of product enhancements on eBay" this year. 

New sales data from brick-and-mortar retail outlets reveals that Apple Stores see some 17 times more sales than the national average and lead all U.S. retail chains in sales per square foot. Market analytics firm Asymco, drawing from raw data provided by RetailSails, notes that Apple Stores worldwide smashed the average sales numbers posted by other U.S. chains, raking in $5,626 per square foot in the four quarters ending in August 2011. Apple's performance nearly doubled that of first runner up Tiffany & Co. and was seven times more efficient than the median of the top 20 retailers.