Office Depot

Lacking major shopping holidays and chock-full of vacations and down time, retail's second quarter can be a sluggish sales period for even the most successful retailers. Nevertheless, retailers offering both everyday staple items (supermarkets, drugstores and auto parts) were able to achieve impressive same-store sales increases, taking several spots among the top-performing Q2 retailers. The Bottom 5 list indicates trouble for retailers offering consumer electronics, at least during this non-holiday period. Best Buy and RadioShack both made the list, as did Office Depot, which offers computers and consumer electronics along with office supplies. Following are the Top and Bottom

Office Depot reported its loss widened to $29 million in the second quarter, compared with a loss of $25 million in the year-ago period. Sales were essentially flat in the quarter at $2.7 billion. By division, total sales dipped 2 percent in the North American retail division to $1.1 billion, and same-store sales decreased 1 percent.

Office Depot completed its phased deployment of JDA Point-of-Sale (POS) to more than 5,000 retail terminals in over 1,110 U.S. stores. The retailer began the POS rollout in waves in 2010, with the remaining stores following in the spring of 2011, and is already seeing the benefit of implementing the POS solution.

Office Depot announced that it's appointed Kevin Peters as president, North America, a new position that combines the company’s previous North American retail and North American business solutions divisions.

Earth Day is right around the corner, and this time of year is always chock-full of environmentally friendly events, such as park clean-ups and tree plantings. However, there are a few local events worth noting that are happening at unlikely locales — large companies.

Office Depot admits it hasn't been taking care of business when it comes to its retail store customers. The big-box retail concept offering thousands of office supply products was no longer working. "Our model was broken," said Kevin Peters, head of the retail division for Boca Raton, Fla.-based Office Depot.

After having gained about 25 percent last year, retail stocks continued their advance in the first trading session of 2011 amid optimism that consumer demand will continue to improve in the new year.

Office Depot Inc. rose to a six-month high and trading of bullish options jumped to 14 times the four-week average on speculation that the retailer will be bought after it boosted executives' pay in the event of a sale.

Walgreen's, Canadian Tire, J.C. Penney, Save-A-Lot, Sports Authority, Staples and True Value are among the brands incorporating the web version of their weekly newspaper circulars into their Facebook pages.

For patent lawyers, Bilski v. Kappos was the most eagerly anticipated Supreme Court decision in years — a decision on the patentability of business methods, the primary type of patent asserted against direct marketers that operate e–commerce websites. Unfortunately, when the Supreme Court finally issued its decision at the end of June, Bilski turned out to be this year’s Waterworld.