Management

To celebrate Independence Day in honor of military troops and their families, Old Navy announced its entire U.S. fleet of about 1,000 stores will host Operation Troop Donation: a donation drive to collect essential items needed by the men and women serving our country, away and at home.

With online purchases on the rise, some retailers are reducing the size of brick-and-mortar stores in an effort to lower costs. Staples, Office Depot and Best Buy are the latest retailers to unveil plans to reduce store footprints.

American Apparel, the clothing chain that raised cash earlier this year to avoid a shortfall, is in talks to replace two of its six board members, according to three people involved in the discussions.

Timberland's announced the appointment of Mark Newton as vice president of corporate social responsibility, effective June 13. In this new role, Newton will lead Timberland's diverse global team responsible for managing the organization's four areas of focus within CSR: environmental stewardship, global human rights, community engagement and transparency and reporting.

Investors and analysts tend to rate retail industry CEOs with a completely different set of criteria than retail employees would use to rate their boss's boss's boss's boss. So if you asked the employees of the largest U.S. retail industry chains if they approved of their CEO, what would they say?

An Apple store employee has started a drive to unionize retail workers of the company. Cory Moll, a part-time employee at an Apple store in San Francisco, is working to form a union to fight for better wages and benefits and to address what he says are unfair practices.

Kmart is laying off 700 employees in its appliance departments. The chain is changing the way it sells appliances, allowing customers to check out appliances at any register rather than going to a dedicated register. Instead of having dedicated appliance-only associates, all Kmart staffers are being trained to answer questions about appliances.

HSN announced that Arthur Lewis has been appointed senior vice president of merchandising, digital commerce, effective June 27. Lewis will report directly to Jill Braff, executive vice president of digital commerce for HSN. Lewis will oversee HSN's cross-channel merchandising strategy on hsn.com, mobile and tablet platforms. He will also leverage his extensive digital background to grow all brands and categories of business, including online product exclusives and category expansions, the company reported.

Growth in retail crime and fraud is leaving retailers racing to stop the individuals responsible for stealing billions of dollars each year. Preliminary results of the latest National Retail Security Survey, released at the National Retail Federation’s Loss Prevention Conference and EXPO, show that retail shrinkage increased to 1.58 percent of retail sales in 2010, up from 1.44 percent in 2009.

Workers at a Target store in suburban New York City voted against joining a union, bringing another defeat to organized labor in its attempts to penetrate the world of big retail. The vote was 137 to 85, as Target workers in Valley Stream, N.Y., declined to be represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union.