Target Severs Ties With Vendor Over Egyptian-Cotton Dispute by Shannon Pettypiece at Bloomberg. "The retailer said it discovered last month that 750,000 sheets and pillowcases labeled as Egyptian cotton were actually made with another type of cotton. The retailer pulled the items from its stores, and on Friday it began notifying customers that it will give them a refund on the products." Read more   ...Welspun India shares fell 20 percent, the most in a decade at Bloomberg. Read more   Dick's Sporting Goods Announces Acquisition Of Affinity Sports "Affinity Sports will provide key services to various youth sports [...]

  Malware Infected All Eddie Bauer Stores in U.S., Canada at Krebs on Security. "...credit and debit cards used at those stores during the first six months of 2016 may have been compromised in the breach. The acknowledgement comes nearly six weeks after KrebsOnSecurity first notified the clothier about a possible intrusion at stores nationwide." Read more   Neiman Marcus chops about 80 jobs by Candice Carlisle & Korri Kezar at Dallas Business Journal. "Over the last 18 months we have successfully transitioned our buying teams to align them to omnichannel," the spokeswoman said in an emailed statement to the [...]

  Walmart Q2 Comp +1.6% / Sam's Club +0.6% (ex. fuel) "Walmart: the seventh consecutive quarter of positive traffic, up 1.2%. Neighborhood Market comp sales increased approximately 6.5%." Press release   ...CNBC: Wal-Mart's 2Q Earnings Top Expectations, Outlook Raised at Fox Business. "Walmart earned $1.07 a share...Analysts had expected Wal-Mart to report earnings of $1.02 a share...Wal-Mart's online sales picked up from the first quarter, increasing 11.8 percent, but the rate of growth was slower than last year's 16 percent lift for the comparable period." Read more   MARVIN ELLISON ON CNBC - JC Penney's CEO maps out three-year turnaround plan by [...]

  Target Q2 Comp Sales -1.1% "Second quarter 2016 sales decreased 7.2 percent to $16.2 billion from $17.4 billion last year, reflecting a 1.1 percent decrease in comparable sales combined with the removal of pharmacy and clinic revenues from this year’s results. Comparable digital channel sales grew 16 percent." Press release   ...Target Cuts Forecast as Same-Store Sales Drop via Fox Business. "Target said it expected same-store sales to be flat to down 2 percent in the second half of the year and cut its full-year adjusted profit forecast to $4.80-$5.20 per share from $5.20-$5.40." Read more   ...@jimcramer: Have to [...]

  Home Depot Q2 Comp Sales + 4.7% / U.S. + 5.4% "Home Depot...reported sales of $26.5 billion for the second quarter of fiscal 2016, a 6.6 percent increase from the second quarter of fiscal 2015." Press release   ...CNBC: Home Depot matches Street, boosts full-year forecast by Krystina Gustafson at CNBC. "It's a good quarter but it does not deliver the upside that we've seen from Home Depot over the past few quarters," Oppenheimer senior analyst Brian Nagel told CNBC's "Squawk Box." Read more   Dick's Sporting Goods Q2 Comp Sales + 1.2% "Same store sales for DICK'S Sporting [...]

  At Aldi's Empire of Austerity, a Fight Over Extravagant Spending by Matthew Campbell, Karin Matussek, Nicholas Brautlecht at Bloomberg. "The feud has upended decades of obsessive discretion at Aldi, whose owners are so secretive that the only widely published photo of Theo Jr. is a grainy, decades-old paparazzi snap. The given names and exact ages of Babette’s children—quadruplets who are about 26 and a sister who’s about 24—are so closely guarded that they were never revealed until last year, and the family won an injunction against a magazine that published them." Read more   Can Target Fix Its Grocery [...]

  JCPenney Q2 Comp Sales +2.2% "Marvin R. Ellison: "We exceeded our profitability expectations, achieving an $85 million or 59% increase in EBITDA to $229 million for the quarter." Press release   The Street: JCPenney Is Crushing Every Other Department Store Known to Man by Brian Sozzi. "JCPenney executives will likely enter a summer weekend all smiles..." Read more   CNBC: JCPenney reports a smaller-than-expected loss but revenues fall just shy of expectations Read more   Amazon Exec Jumps to Under Armour by Ryan Sharrow at Baltimore Business Journal. "Under Armour has named Andy Donkin, head of worldwide mass and brand marketing [...]

  Macy's to Close 100 Stores via Fox Business. "Sales in stores open at least a year, including sales in departments licensed to third parties, fell 2 percent, smaller than the 4.6 percent expected by analysts polled by research firm Consensus Metrix." Read more | Press release   ...Most of these stores will close early in 2017...The locations of the 100 stores to be closed will be announced at a later date...Press release   Kohl's Q2 Comp Sales -1.8% "Kevin Mansell, Kohl's chairman, chief executive officer and president, said, "Our sales improved over our first quarter results, but were below our expectations. [...]