Wal-Mart

Brookstone will appoint senior retail executive Thomas M. Via as president and CEO, and as a member of its board of directors, effective Dec. 1. Steven H. Schwartz, who had been serving as interim CEO, will resume his role as chief merchandising officer. Via spent the past 12 years at Toys"R"Us, most recently as its senior vice president for Babies"R"Us in the U.S., where he was responsible for providing leadership for the company's juvenile product growth strategy and served on the Global Commercial Committee.   

Macy's CEO Terry Lundgren said he's increasingly concerned about the threat of a labor strike at West Coast ports, so he's enlisting retail heavyweights to lobby the White House for help. After Lundgren and the National Retail Federation urged President Barack Obama to take action, the executive said he also sought the help of friend Doug McMillon, the CEO of Wal-Mart. 

A group of Wal-Mart employees pushing for higher wages said on Friday they were planning protests at 1,600 Wal-Mart stores nationwide on Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year in the United States. The labor group, Our Wal-Mart, said it had protested 1,200 to 1,400 Wal-Mart stores last year on Black Friday. Wal-Mart Stores Inc, owner of Wal-Mart brand stores, and the largest private employer in the United States, has been a target for activists in the contentious national debate over proposals to raise the minimum wage.

Wal-Mart is making Black Friday a weeklong event, shifting away from the chaotic one-day sales that once epitomized the day after Thanksgiving. The "New Black Friday" will include five days of sales on Walmart.com and in stores, starting at 12:01 a.m. online on Thanksgiving and running through Cyber Monday, the Bentonville, Ark.-based company said in a statement today. "Black Friday has become Black Friday week," Duncan Mac Naughton, Wal-Mart's chief merchandising officer, told reporters yesterday. "Our customers want to shop when they want to shop so we're trying to expand the times and product availability with them."

Wal-Mart is doing whatever it takes to rope in holiday shoppers however they want to buy. For the first time, Wal-Mart is offering free shipping on what it considers the season's top 100 hottest gifts, from board games to items related to Disney's hit film "Frozen," starting Saturday. The move comes as rival Target began offering free shipping on all items, a program that started in late October and will last through Dec. 20. Wal-Mart is also planning to offer discounts on more than 20,000 items on a broad range of products, starting Saturday.

It's hard to believe we're less than a month away from Thanksgiving. Over the last few years, retailers have opened their stores earlier and earlier on Black Friday in order to cash in on the holiday shopping frenzy. So much so that Black Friday doorbuster sales have crept — uninvited — into our Thanksgiving dinners. Big-box retailers such as Wal-Mart and Toys"R"Us have gone on record as to how opening on Thanksgiving has increased their sales drastically. But honestly, how in the world did 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving turn into the new midnight for Black Friday sales?

Retail giant Wal-Mart caused a stir on Monday, after a listing for plus-size Halloween outfits appeared on its website under the heading "Fat Girl Costumes." The retail chain quickly backtracked, issuing an apology before changing the heading to "Women's Plus-Size Halloween Costumes." "This never should have been on our site. It's unacceptable, and we apologize," a spokesperson for the company said. "We are working to remove it as soon as possible and ensure this never happens again."

Halloween marks the new kickoff of the holiday shopping season for retailers. According to multiple surveys, more Americans will celebrate the holiday then ever before. The National Retail Federation (NRF) reported that "more costumes than ever will be flying off the shelves" this year. Seventy-six percent of consumers plan to purchase a costume for Halloween festivities, a dramatic increase from last year's 65 percent. Collectively, total sales for retailers this Halloween are estimated to be around $7.4 billion. So, what's driving this growth?

Wal-Mart's more than 11,000 retail locations across 27 countries provides the company's U.S. division a testing lab stretching across five continents, according to Wal-Mart International CEO David Cheesewright. Joking to the crowd gathered during an Oct. 15 investor conference, Cheesewright noted that he was the third speaker of the day who has English as a foreign language. To that point, the world has become smaller and more connected via technology. Retail is at the center of that change. Changes seen in the global markets often make their way back to the Bentonville mothership, he said.

In what can't be qualified as surprising news, Sears Holdings Corp announced this morning that it will close more than 100 stores across the country and lay off upwards of 5,500 employees. At least 46 Kmart stores, 30 Sears department stores and 31 Sears Auto Centers are scheduled to close before the end of January. This is just the latest in a series of moves that Sears has made as it fights to keep its head above water.