Retail

  AP Wal-Mart opened a 12,000-square-foot culinary and innovation center at its headquarters in June as a place where the nation’s largest food retailer can work with major suppliers to come up with new food ideas, and develop ideas on its own to bolster its store-brand selection. HERE’S A PEEK AT THE FOOD LAB WHAT IT IS: The center has …

  Bloomberg Checkout lines at most American retailers were noticeably shorter in July as sales stalled following one of the strongest quarters in years, indicating consumer spending will cool in the third quarter. The Commerce Department said purchases totaled $457.7 billion last month, little changed from the $457.9 billion in June. That reflected declining receipts at eight of 13 major …

  Bloomberg Even as the initial craze for Pokemon Go wanes, companies that sell merchandise tied to the augmented-reality game are benefiting. U.S. online sales for Pokemon-branded merchandise rose 105 percent in July compared with the previous year, according to Adobe’s Digital Price Index, which tracks sales from two-thirds of the Fortune 50 companies. Branded items include toys, electronics such …

  Bloomberg Mike Ashley, the British billionaire behind embattled retailer Sports Direct International Plc, has grappled with declining growth, a plunging share price and a parliamentary grilling this year. Now he’s got another problem: Disappearing employees. Turnover among Sports Direct’s salaried U.K. staff rose by more than three percentage points last year to 22 percent, the company disclosed in its …

  Bloomberg India’s finance minister has approved a proposal that clarifies how Apple Inc. could open stores in the fast-growing economy without initially having to source components locally, people familiar with the matter said. Arun Jaitley ratified a proposal that gives the information technology ministry the power to label a retailer of a single brand as a provider of cutting-edge …

  Bloomberg Tesla Motors Inc. marked the opening of its largest North American sales, service and delivery center in San Francisco, a key market from which Elon Musk’s electric-car maker will introduce its all-important Model 3 sedan late next year. Though Tesla is based in nearby Palo Alto, the 65,000-square-foot (6,039-square-meter) San Francisco center is the company’s first in the …

  Bloomberg Gap Inc., the biggest US apparel-focused retailer, fell in late trading after posting July comparable sales that missed analysts’ estimates and indicated that foot traffic at its stores might not improve as much as expected later in the year. Same-store sales — a key benchmark — dropped 4 percent in July, the San Francisco-based retailer said in a …

  Bloomberg Online retailers like Amazon.com have made it possible to get books, high heels, laptops and groceries delivered to your doorstep after work and even on Sundays. But carriers at the US Postal Service pay a price for such convenience: they’re getting bitten by dogs. Attacks on postal employees are on the rise — in 2015 alone, they jumped …

  NEW YORK /AP Wal-Mart, the US largest private employer, launched a new scheduling system in about 650 Neighborhood Market stores that gives hourly workers more certainty about their schedules. The system was launched in late July and could be eventually rolled out to all 4,600 U.S. Wal-Mart stores, said Mark Ibbotson, Wal-Mart’s executive vice president of central operations. There …

  Bloomberg Nike Inc.’s decision to stop selling golf equipment and a possible bankruptcy filing by the Golfsmith retail chain are raising concerns that the declining popularity of the sport is taking a toll on the companies that thrive on it. Millennials, the key to the sport’s future, are shunning the expensive and time-consuming game in favor of more instantly …