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Target Corp. said Tuesday that it will stop offering health insurance to its part-time employees because new online health exchanges offer workers an opportunity to buy coverage. The Minneapolis-based retailer will give each worker $500 to help buy health insurance, and has arranged for one-on-one consultations with benefits manager Towers Watson to help with the transition. The retailer announced the decision through its online site, “A Bullseye View: Behind the Scenes at Target,” in a Q&A with Jodee Kozlak, Target’s executive vice president of human resources. In the article, Kozlak acknowledged the disruption to workers. But she said the exchanges...

Police have arrested two Mexican illegal aliens on fraud charges in the first arrests tied to the December Target credit card breach -- a stark reminder of the frequent involvement of illegal immigration and identity theft in the U.S.On Sunday, Police arrested 27-year-old Mary Carmen Garcia and 28-year-old Daniel Guardiola Dominguez both from Monterrey as they tried to cross into the U.S. from Reynosa with 96 fraudulent credit credit cards in their possession, said Police Chief Victor Rodriguez. Account information stolen during the Target security breach was used to produce the credit cards. The illegals, both from Monterrey, Mexico, used cards...

The news around shopping during the holiday season was dominated by two separate stories. One talked about how traffic to brick-and-mortar stores was well below expectations, and that these retailers were forced to discount tremendously to drive sales. The other talked about how an enormous late surge in packages coming from e-commerce companies overwhelmed the capacity of UPS and, to a lesser extent, FedEx, and caused many of these packages to arrive after Christmas. But, to me, these two stories are not at all separate, they simply reflect different sides of the same narrative: We’re in the midst of a...

Yesterday afternoon, JCPenney announced it would be laying off around 2,500 employees and shuttering 33 underperforming stores around the country. Want to know if your local JCP made the cut?

Last weekend, Target finally disclosed at least one cause of the massive data breach that exposed personal and financial information on more than 110 million customers: Malicious software that infected point-of-sale systems at Target checkout counters. Today’s post includes new information about the malware apparently used in the attack, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter.

NEW YORK – J.C. Penney Co. said on Wednesday it would close 33 stores and cut 2,000 jobs as part of its efforts to return to profitability. Chief Executive Myron Ullman said in a statement the action "addresses a strategic priority to improve the profitability of our stores." Penney is the second major U.S. retailer in as many weeks to announce layoffs. Last week, Macy's Inc said it was eliminating 2,500 jobs. Those cuts will be offset over time as the retailer plans to add positions to its online business, leaving overall staffing levels unchanged at around 175,000.

Sears, once America's golden retailer, is a company in crisis. The company has shuttered hundreds of stores in recent years. The embattled company has been selling some its most profitable stores to raise money. And now, shares are tumbling after Sears lowered guidance for the quarter and announced that comparable sales in the fourth quarter have slid more than 7%. Brian Sozzi, chief equities strategist at Belus Capital Advisors, took poignant photos inside of New Jersey and New York Sears locations in October. "To understand why Sears is in a 'sell stores mode' one must look no further than the...

The axe is falling at Macy's. The department store operator said Wednesday that it was laying off 2,500 workers and closing five stores. The company is also consolidating its regional management and restructuring its retail and merchandise planning staff. "[W]e have identified some specific areas where we can improve our efficiency without compromising our effectiveness in serving the evolving needs of our customers," Macy's CEO Terry Lundgren said in a statement.

<p>Wal-Mart’s wages are so low that many of its workers must rely on food stamps and other government aid programs, costing taxpayers as much as $900,0000 at just one Wal-Mart Supercenter in Wisconsin.</p> <p>So how did the report’s authors come up with the $900,000 figure? First, they took into account the number of Wal-Mart stores and employees across Wisconsin and the per-person costs of Badgercare, the state’s health care program, estimating that the cost of the publicly funded health care comes to $251,706 per year for a Supercenter that employees 300 workers.</p>

AVT, Inc. (OTC Markets: AVTC) (www.autoretail.com), a leader in custom vending machines, business opportunities, and kiosks, commented today on a research report that predicted over 35,000 Micromarket locations within the decade. The study, written by noted market research company Bachtelle and Associates, and published in Vending Times Magazine, said that this is a "new channel" and is "driving more sales, pleasing customers and exciting our industry." "We predict that there will be 13,000 Micromarkets on location by 2015, and 35,000 within a decade," Brad Bachtelle stated. AVT is a leader in Micromarket design and development. From their unique UShop systems,...

U.S. retail sales rose 3.5 percent during the holiday season this year, helped by deep discounts at malls and purchases of children’s apparel and jewelry, MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse said. Sales of holiday-related categories, such as clothing, electronics and luxury goods, rose 2.3 percent from Nov. 1 through Dec. 24 compared with a year earlier, the research firm said Thursday. SpendingPulse tracks total U.S. sales at stores and online via all payment forms. Falling store traffic in recent weeks and uneven demand, especially for apparel, spurred chains to risk earnings by pouring on the discounts to generate sales. Retailers including Gap...

He said it’s crucial for retailers to get sales post Christmas as consumers visit stores to redeem gift cards, which don’t count as sales until after they are redeemed. In fact, Dec. 26 and this Saturday both are expected to be among the season’s top 10 shopping days. “There’s a lot of money that’s still out there.” Meanwhile, weak in-store sales are being partly offset by growth online. Online sales between Dec. 15 and Dec. 18, for instance, jumped 13%, with 23% traffic growth, according to Custora Pulse, which tracks real time data from over 100 U.S. retailers. Indeed, other...

With Target already reeling from a massive hack that left up to 40 million credit and debit cards compromised, The New York Times now reports that all that data has been pouring into the black market since the break-in. With the breach taking place between Black Friday and December 15th, criminals on hundreds of illicit card-selling markets have likely had access to consumer information for weeks to date. "Guests will not be held responsible for fraud" Security experts, including security blogger Brian Krebs, say that criminals sell stolen credit cards in bulk, with individual cards going for as little as...

Overstock.com – the American internet retailer with over a billion dollars per year in sales – will accept Bitcoin starting in 2014. As Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne told the Financial Times: I think a healthy monetary system at the end of the day isn’t an upside down pyramid based on the whim of a government official, but is based on something that they can’t control. If there’s going to be some part of the population which adopts it… I think that we’ll get that business. And the people who switch to it will respect that we started adopting it. Europe...

<p>NEW YORK – Sparse crowds at malls and “50 percent off” signs at The Gap, Ann Taylor and other stores give a clue as to how the holiday season is going.</p> <p>This is shaping up to be the most discount-driven holiday season since the country was in a deep recession. It’s also one of the most disappointing for stores.</p>

<p>"Duck Dynasty" isn't just a smash-hit TV show, it's a merchandising powerhouse.</p> <p>It's too soon to tell if retailers will pull the clan's products from their shelves after Phil Robertson made homophobic comments in an interview with GQ magazine. However the A&E network did suspend the reality show star.</p>

Cabela’s Incorporated (CAB), the World’s Foremost Outfitter® of hunting, fishing and outdoor gear, announced today plans to bring the extraordinary Cabela’s retail experience to customers in Fort Mill, S.C., a suburb of Charlotte, N.C. Construction on the 97,500-square-foot store is scheduled to begin in 2014 and Cabela’s anticipates a spring 2015 opening. It will be Cabela’s second store in South Carolina, joining the Greenville location scheduled to open in spring 2014. The company also recently announced plans to open a store in Garner, N.C., in 2015.

Fifteen dollars an hour to say, "Would you like fries with that?" or "Welcome to Wal-Mart?" PLEASE. My very first position out of college in a terrible job market was as a Wal-Mart portrait studio photographer. Around the holidays, we'd have long lines; trying to get kids to smile after they've been waiting in Wal-Mart for two hours is no picnic. On my off days, I didn't dare pick up the phone because my district manager regularly called people and demanded that they fill in for employees who were sick in other locations. There was no chance of advancement because...

MARSHALL (AP) - Three people have been hurt in a hatchet attack at a Wal-Mart in East Texas and police arrested a transient on assault charges. Marshall police Detective Sonya Johnson said Monday that Christopher Hamilton of Crawford, Ark., allegedly had the hatchet with him when entering the store. Two female workers and a male shopper were attacked early Sunday.

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