Skip Clark named Sr. Director of Asset Protection for Bi-Lo grocery stores.

Borders cuts 45 corporate jobs and their VP of LP left the company two weeks ago (Skip Clark mentioned above).  So the question becomes does Borders replace the VP of LP position?  Probably not in our opinion.  (Source wtxl.com)

Rudy Mazak, a former Loss Prevention executive, was promoted to Divisional Vice President of Operations at Sears Hometown Stores last week and actually represents the third LP executive who is helping lead the Sears Hometown Stores Division.  This is the first time in retail history where three LP executives are actually operationally running an entire retail division.  With Will Powell as President, Rudy Mazak as Div VP of Op's and Chris Spaccaforno as Director of Operations, what an accomplishment and what a team.

At last week's NRF Big Show, Ira Kalish, Director for Deloitte Research, stated "U.S. retailers want to grow and the U.S. may not be the place to do it." With the U.S. saturated as we've commented numerous times, pushing north and east is logical, but another attendee, William Fields, Chairman and Co-founder of China Horizon, made the push for entry into this rapidly growing market.  "This is the time to build a brand, this is the time to understand that China is the second largest economy in the world," said Fields.  (Source Retailingtoday.com)

A&P 3Q reports same store sales down 4.9% with a loss of $181 million

By June 30, Radio Shack will be operating the wireless departments at 1,450 Target Stores.  (Source retailingtoday.com)

"The Safeway Foundation said it would donate $100,000 to launch a fund designed to aid victims of the Jan. 8 shootings here. This opening contribution will be bolstered by in-store contributions from Safeway customers and community members in 116 Arizona stores operated by Safeway, the company said."  (Source supermarketnews.com)

CyberSource, a Visa Company, released their 7th annual UK Online Fraud Report and showed a 19% increase in key fraud metrics.  With 1.9% of 2010 online orders accepted later resulted in fraud compared to 1.6% in 2009.  With online fraud remaining the number one business threat for e-commerce, 56% of the respondents stated that they are spending too much by reviewing too many orders and 44% were concerned about the overall revenue being lost. (Source theretailbulletin.com)

CyberSource, a Visa Company also released their North American Online Fraud Report for 2010 and showed in the U.S. and Canada the fraud rate remained at 0.9% for the second straight year, less than half of the UK.  This translates into a 2010 merchant dollar loss of approximately $2.7 billion, a decrease from CyberSource's estimates of merchant loss in 2009 of $3.3 billion and $4.0 billion in 2008.  With manual reviewing of orders down to 17% from 20% in 2009, 41% of U.S./Canadian merchants are using case management systems and 53% of North American merchants said improving automated fraud detection is a top priority.   To obtain a copy of the North American survey results -- for journalists: please call or email Bruce Frymire (650-965-6042, bfrymire@cybersource.com). For all others: please visit www.cybersource.com/fraudreport2011  (Source PRNewswire.com)

Sterling Jewelers (a division of Signet Jewelers, the world's largest specialty retail jeweler) reports same store sales up 11.7% for the nine-week period prior to Jan. 1, 2011.  At the beginning of the recession, a number of economist talked about watching the jewelers look for sales increases to truly indicate when we exit the worst part of the recession.  Certainly, Sterling's numbers are great, but are we really out of the woods? 

TJX Cos. with 52 ORC investigators spread across the U.S. and led by Eliot Green, TJX's AVP and National Investigations Director who served as chief of the Massachusetts Attorney General's Insurance and Unemployment Fraud Division, their "fierce fight against retail crime" is leading the way in the retail industry and his talk last week at the NRF's Big Show went extremely well.  (Source Boston Globe)


Upcoming NRF event
Los Angeles Area ORC Association Conference
February 24, 2011, Los Angeles, CA

Make sure you plan on attending