Best Buy today released the results of an independent ethics inquiry, confirming that former CEO Brian Dunn, who resigned on April 10th, had engaged in an inappropriate relationship with a female staffer. The company also named a new chairman of the board in Hatim Tayabji, chairman and CEO of Bytemobile.

According to the company's press release, "When the Audit Committee was first informed of the allegations in mid-March 2012, it hired outside law firm WilmerHale to conduct an independent investigation. In the interest of transparency and accountability, the board made a commitment to publicly release the findings."

The company is also in the midst of closing 50 of its big box U.S. stores this year.Continue reading...

Sears is testing local, personalized e-commerce with the launch of SearsLocalAd.com, which debuts today in Pittsburgh and a handful of other U.S. test markets. The details:Continue reading...

More and more, big bricks-and-mortar retailers have their backs to the wall. In the case of Best Buy, the shakeup has rattled the executive suite. But in the case of Target, the seachange has prompted retaliation.

Target has announced that it no longer will be selling Amazon's Kindle e-readers as a retaliatory measure for Amazon's encouragement of American shoppers to "showroom" products at retailers and then buy them less expensively online. Given that Target was the first brick-and-mortar retailer to sell the popular e-reader, the move is particularly galling for Amazon.Continue reading...

Walmart executives must be experiencing deja vu.

Wasn't it just 20 years ago that they were reviled around the United States as plunderers of small retailers that didn't have a chance once a Walmart targeted a particular American town? The almost 50-year-old retail giant spent most of the last decade dutifully improving its reputation with various pools of critics on those grounds and others. But now, the Mexico-bribery scandal unveiled by the New York Times has brought back those awful allusions to ruthless corporate raiders — only, this time, the ignominy has been elevated to a global scale.

Walmart shoppers in America and the world around aren't likely to care too much about the company's bribes in Mexico; future sales trends are much more likely to be dictated by Walmart's pricing, merchandising and marketing practices and, of course, whether the U.S. economy ever pulls out of its slow-growth mode. But the house that Sam Walton built, which turns 50 in July, does need to be concerned about the future of its U.S. urban expansion plans for its smaller (than a SuperCenter) "Neighborhood Market" stores in the wake of the Mexico scandal.Continue reading...

Fifty years ago, some kind of discount-retail god must have looked down upon America. Target, Walmart, and Kmart all established their first stores in 1962 and now they’re all finding ways to celebrate.

Walmart has rolled out a special website with a countdown clock to its 50th anniversary on July 2nd. Target celebrates its 50th year on May 1st, half a century after the Dayton Company opened its first Target-branded discount store in Roseville, Minnesota. (Of course, they’re all toddlers compared with JCPenney, which turns 110 this year.)

Of course this isn’t the only way these two retailers will be clashing heads. Target is spending part of this year prepping to make its launch in Canada in 2013, a market that Walmart has had its stamp on for nearly two decades. Target will be opening 125 to 135 stores, but Walmart is hoping to dampen the party.Continue reading...

Lululemon, the billion-dollar Canadian yoga-inspired athletic apparel brand founded by former surfer Dennis "Chip" Wilson in 1998, continues to cause a stir in retail, lifestyles and its focus on a tight community with bizarre principles. 

In its earnings report last month covering its fiscal year that ended on January 29th, the company's CEO, Christine Day, announced:

"Reaching a billion dollars in revenue is clearly an important milestone that as a company we can all be very proud of. But far more important than the number itself are the beliefs, values, culture and people that achieved it. We really are so much more than our numbers; it is the everyday actions of our dedicated team that translates into an unparalleled guest experience and allows us to achieve our ultimate goal of elevating the world."

The original mission that Wilson set out for the brand, to "elevate the world from mediocrity to greatness," has morphed into "create components for people to live long, healthy, and fun lives."Continue reading...

London’s Savile Row has long been the home of some of the world’s finest tailors. Everybody from Winston Churchill to Elton John and MI5's dashing James Bond has gotten their clothes made there. The street has been around since the early 1730s but didn’t become a tailoring hub until the early 1800s.

It got a shot of cool and street cred back in the ‘60s when the Beatles opened its Apple Records studios, but it’s still better known as the place for the monied classes to secure their waistcoats, cutaway tails, and other tailoring needs for hundreds of years.

A recent change on the “golden mile of tailoring,” however, has got a few bespoke knickers in a twist. Abercrombie & Fitch just opened a children’s store along the Row and some folks weren't happy, as evidenced by a flash mob protest against A&F that was organized by the wannabe dandies at The Chap magazine on that bastion of British fine tailoring.Continue reading...

UK retailer Marks and Spencer is an old hand at creating snazzy outfits, such as the official suit that Team England is sporting at the European soccer championships.

But it's also committed to doing so sustainability while helping those in need, which is why M&S has been working with Oxfam for the past four years. That effort has brought in more than 10 million pieces of clothing for Oxfam's "op shops" throughout Great Britain, and now the company is taking its good work to another level.

M&S is expanding the collaboration with the launch of London’s first Sustainable Fashion Lab, a pop-up concept that will open on Thursday April 26 and close on May 9. The idea is to get designers and stylists together with sustainability thought leaders to spark a conversation about how the fashion industry can be more sustainable, while also giving the retailer a platform to highlight its Plan A commitment to become "the world's most sustainable major retailer."Continue reading...