Walmart goes to the cloud to close gap with Amazon by Nandita Bose at Reuters. "It has made a big difference to how fast we can grow our e-commerce business,” said Tim Kimmet, head of cloud operations for Walmart. He said Walmart, for example, is using cloud data to stock items frequently ordered by customers via voice shopping devices such as Google Home." Read more/Video   Home Depot Battles Tight Labor Market With Easy Application by Matthew Townsend at Bloomberg. "...applying was cut to 15 minutes, from about an hour, and applications surged 50 percent. Now, this spring, people [...]

  Equifax names Home Depot exec to lead security by Michael E. Kannel at AJC. "Jamil Farshchi, who was hired by Home Depot after that company’s data breach, takes the slot at Equifax about five months after the company revealed that hackers had accessed the personal information of more than 145 million Americans held in Equifax systems." Read more   Amazon’s Latest Ambition: To Be a Major Hospital Supplier by Melanie Evans & Laura Stevens at Wall Street Journal. "Amazon recently dispatched employees to a large Midwestern hospital system, where hospital officials are testing whether they can use Amazon Business [...]

  Instacart Adds $200 Million to Defend Against Amazon Delivery by Olivia Zaleski & Ellen Huet at Bloomberg. "The funding values Instacart at $4.2 billion, said people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because the terms are private. That’s quite a ways off from Amazon’s $649 billion market value..." Read more   Walmart taps Justice Department’s Rachel Brand as its corporate secretary, compliance officer by Kim Souza at Talk Business. "Rachel Brand will join the company as executive vice president, global governance and corporate secretary. Brand will report to CEO Doug McMillon and is replacing Jeff [...]

  Walmart Might Be Spending Billions for a Stake in Flipkart at Fortune. "Walmart is in discussions to pay several billion dollars for as much as 20% of India e-commerce leader Flipkart Online Services, according to a person familiar with the matter. The world’s biggest retailer would invest in Flipkart as part of a proposed deal that would increase the startup’s valuation as high as $20 billion, said the person." Read more   Amazon reportedly launching a delivery service for businesses at CNBC. "The service is called "Shipping with Amazon" and will see the tech giant picking up packages from businesses [...]

  Walgreens will now let customers use bathrooms based on gender identity by Chris Perez at NY Post. "Through [Meehan’s] efforts, with the backing of the ACLU of Southern California, the Walgreens pharmacy chain with more than 8,000 stores nationwide adopted a policy to address bathroom discrimination,” the group said in its statement Monday." Read more   Activist Pushes Supervalu to Break Up, Explore Sale by David Benoit & Heather Haddon at Wall Street Journal. "Blackwells Capital LLC, which owns about 4.35% of Supervalu’s stock, privately urged the board to give it three seats and form a committee to review potentially [...]

  Hudson's Bay Poaches Helena Foulkes From CVS by Phil Wahba at Fortune. "Foulkes, long seen as a potential CEO at CVS, will have her hands full at HBC. In its most recent quarter, HBC...reported comparable sales fell 3.2%...HBC is also in an uneasy truce with an activist investor who has pressured it to sell of its German business and even consider turning the Saks flagship in Manhattan into a hotel." Read more   Coach owner Tapestry's sales top Wall Street estimates at CNBC. "During the latest quarter, global same-store sales of the Coach brand rose 3 percent, while Kate [...]

  Macy's launches pop-up marketplaces in its stores at CNBC. "Brands pay a one-time fee for the space and retain all their sales. The program, which formally launches Monday, will initially be tried in 10 cities, including at the Herald Square flagship in New York, Boston, Las Vegas and Fort Lauderdale, Florida." Read more   Target helps NFL players think about their next careers by Kavita Kumar at Star Tribune. "CEO Brian Cornell told the 15 or so players in attendance that he once wanted to be in their shoes playing for the NFL. "Unfortunately, I peaked when I was [...]

  The head of Boxed’s fastest-growing business is leaving amid sale talks by Jason Del Rey at Recode. "Behzad Soltani, the executive in charge of Boxed’s business-to-business division, is leaving the startup to take a C-level role at another company, Recode has learned...The company’s Chief Merchandising Officer Heather Mayo, a veteran of Sam’s Club, also exited in the fall after only a year on the job. Her departure had not been previously reported." Read more   Amazon profits soar to $1.9B in key holiday quarter, eclipsing Wall Street’s expectations by Nat Levy at GeekWire. "...nearly two-thirds of the $3 billion in profits [...]