US economy grew at strong 3.2% rate in first quarter at AP News. “The advance in the gross domestic product…marks an acceleration from a 2.2% gain in the previous October-December period.” Read more

 

Amazon to make one-day delivery the new standard for Prime by Kurt Schlosser at GeekWire. “The company plans to spend $800 million on the effort in Q2 and in the past month has expanded both its one-day eligible selection of goods and the number of zip codes eligible for one-day shipping.” Read more

 

Amazon.com Announces First Quarter Sales up 17% to $59.7 Billion Press release

 

…Amazon smashes earnings expectations at CNBC. “EPS: $7.09 vs. $4.72, according to analysts surveyed by Refinitiv.” Read more

 

Food Stamp Users Surveyed about BOPIS, Grocery Delivery by Chris Medenwald at Field Agent. “More than half of SNAP users (51%) in our survey said they’d be “completely likely” to use click-and-collect or grocery-delivery…52% would prefer to buy from Walmart.” Read more

 

Starbucks Q2 Comparable Store Sales +3% Press release

 

Walmart to test autonomous cars in Bentonville in the next six weeks by Kim Souza at Talk Business. “He said Walmart worked to get Arkansas law changed to allow for the testing of autonomous Class 4 full-size pickup trucks and Class 5 passenger cars. Shaeffer said Walmart wanted to study the vehicles at home in a suburban setting.” Read more

 

Columbia Sportswear Q1 net sales +8% Press release

 

Walmart adds Washington, D.C. litigator to legal department at Talk Business. “Walmart has hired Kerri L. Ruttenberg to join the company’s legal department as senior vice president of litigation, effective July 1. Ruttenberg is a partner and head of litigation for the Washington, D.C. office of Jones Day.” Read more

 

U.S. slams Alibaba and its challenger Pinduoduo for selling fakes by Rita Liao at TechCrunch. Read more

 

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Juul Names Gap Marketing Veteran Craig Brommers as Its First CMO by Nat Ives at Wall Street Journal. “Mr. Brommers was most recently chief marketing officer at Gap Inc.’s flagship brand and previously held senior marketing posts at Abercrombie & Fitch Co. and Calvin Klein Inc.” WSJ subs.

 

Sobeys brings FreshCo to British Columbia at Financial Post. “The FreshCo store in Mission, B.C., is the first of a dozen shops under that banner promised by Sobeys Inc. by the end of this year in an effort to grow market share in the west following a years-long fallout from its troubled acquisition of the Safeway chain.” Read more

 

Honestbee, the online grocery delivery service in Asia, is nearly out of money and trying to offload its business by Jon Russell at TechCrunch. Read more

 

How Amazon automatically tracks and fires warehouse workers for ‘productivity’ by Colin Lecher at The Verge. “One of the things that we hear consistently from workers is that they are treated like robots in effect because they’re monitored and supervised by these automated systems,” Mitchell says…The system goes so far as to track “time off task,” which the company abbreviates as TOT.” Read more

 

Pier 1 pushes back on S&P global ratings report Press release

 

Toys ‘R’ Us plans to return for the holidays with downsized stores by Lisa Fickenscher at NY Post. “Tru Kids Brands, a licensing firm…plans to open a handful of US stores in time for the holidays that will span about 10,000 square feet each, The Post has learned…“We are a little startup company now,” Tru Kids Chief Executive Richard Barry said, confirming the pint-size store plans.” Read more

 

Aaron’s Q1 comp revenue +0.7% Press release

 

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