Macy's Reimagining Project is a Success
Macy's Says Its 'Bold New Chapter' Plans Are Working, Expanding 'First 50' Blueprint to 125 Stores in 2025
Kicking off the chat at the NRF Big Shoe 2025 with an analysis of how the company's retooling plans (under the moniker of "A Bold New Chapter") were going, Tony Spring (CEO and chairman of Macy's) suggested that he was very pleased with the direction things were currently headed.

"A Bold New Chapter was our opportunity to reimagine the Macy's portfolio, which does include Macy's, Bloomingdale's, and Bluemercury. For the Macy's brand, it's strengthening the Macy's nameplate. It was listening to 60,000 customers that we talked to who were both active and inactive," he said.

"What were they looking for in a shopping experience with Macy's? They wanted a better merchandise assortment that was both private brands and market brands. They wanted a better service experience that was additional colleagues in the store and a better visual presentation. They wanted a better modern take on marketing and a better balance in our media mix between digital and traditional marketing. They were looking for a quicker supply chain. They wanted product to be arriving faster when they ordered it. They wanted things to arrive accurately. Some of the fundamentals of retail," he added.

Moderator Reagan then prompted Spring to talk about how Macy's was addressing the demand to satisfy the aforementioned fundamentals of retail, and the CEO happily obliged, speaking of the success of the company's First 50 blueprint. Under these guidelines, starting with 50 locations in the Macy's stores portfolio, everything from merchandising to the customer experience was purposefully stepped up with a renewed intensity.

As a result, Spring noted, the First 50 project stores saw three consecutive quarters of strong growth. retailwire.com


First Unionized Whole Foods Location
Whole Foods Workers in Philadelphia Vote to Form Chain's First Union

The union win comes as Amazon, which owns the grocery chain, is also fighting labor organizing in its warehouse and delivery businesses.

Workers at a Whole Foods Market in Philadelphia voted on Monday to become the first unionized store in Amazon's grocery chain, opening a new front in the e-commerce giant's efforts to fend off labor organizing in multiple segments of its business.

Employees at the sprawling Whole Foods store, in the city's Spring Garden neighborhood, voted 130-100 in favor of organizing with the United Food and Commercial Workers union, the National Labor Relations Board said.

Store employees said they hoped a union could help negotiate higher wages, above the current starting rate of $16 an hour, and better benefits. Some longtime employees, who have been with Whole Foods since well before Amazon bought the chain in 2017, said reductions in workers' benefits and cuts in staffing levels when Amazon took over, among other changes, had been sources of frustration.

But those leading the union campaign hinted at a broader goal: to inspire a wave of organizing across the chain, adding to union drives among warehouse workers and delivery drivers that Amazon is already combating. nytimes.com


Store Closures to Double in 2025
Are More Store Closings Than Openings in Retail's Future?
Coresight Research predicts a spike in store closings in the U.S. this year, representing the second consecutive year that closures outpace openings. The net increased closures were attributed to shifts to online shopping.

In 2024, U.S. store closures totaled 7,325, reaching the highest number of closings since 2020, the first year of the pandemic, according to Coresight's findings. Openings reached 5,970, which still represented the highest number of openings since 2012 when Coresight began tracking opening/closing data.

For 2025, closings are predicted to more than double year over year to approximately 15,000. Openings are expected to remain about the same at about 5,800 this year.

Coresight said it already tracked over 2,000 planned closures year to date, including announcements from Party City, Big Lots, Kohl's, and Macy's. As of Jan. 17, major U.S. retailers have announced 29.6% fewer openings and 334.3% more closures compared to a year ago. retailwire.com


Presidential Level Salaries At Walmart
Some Walmart managers make more than U.S. Presidents

The retail superstore is now leading the charge for high compensation.

Beginning on February 1, the retailer said it will lift its base pay for market managers from $130,000 to $160,000. "Walmart is increasing base pay, bonus opportunity and annual stock awards for our Market Managers," Walmart said in a statement.

When added together with bonuses and stock grants, some managers will stand to take up over $600,000 at the end of the day -roughly $200,000 more than the salary for a sitting U.S. president. Walmart says about 440 managers are already within this pay band. Such pay is "key for our business and for serving our customers however they shop." thestreet.com


Circana: Consumer spending dips to start year after holiday jump
Circana found that discretionary spending quickly shifted back to the established baseline performance in January after the holidays as consumers resumed their focus on needs and value. During the weeks ending Jan. 11 and 18, discretionary spending was down 4% compared to the prior year.


Love's to upgrade 50 stores, open 20 new locations in 2025

Gen Z still prefers in-person shopping

Peavey Mart Closing Down All Canadian Stores
 

RH-ISAC Cyber Intelligence Summit Coming April 7-9
Cybersecurity Expert to Keynote 2025 RH-ISAC Cyber Intelligence Summit

The conference will highlight cutting-edge cybersecurity insights for the retail and hospitality industries.

VIENNA, VA (January 21, 2025) - The Retail & Hospitality Information Sharing and Analysis Center (RH-ISAC) is thrilled to announce that Rachel Tobac, renowned cybersecurity expert and CEO of SocialProof Security , will deliver the keynote address at the 2025 RH-ISAC Cyber Intelligence Summit, taking place 7-9 April, 2025, in St. Louis, Missouri.

In her keynote, "How I Would Hack You: Live!," Tobac will provide attendees with a front-row seat into the mind of a hacker. Tobac will demonstrate real-world techniques like spear phishing and other trending hacker techniques as she hacks one of RH-ISAC's board members. As she guides the audience through her methods step-by-step, she will highlight critical vulnerabilities organizations face today and share practical insights for strengthening cybersecurity defenses.

"This keynote is a chance for attendees to understand cybersecurity risks from an attacker's perspective and learn how to protect their businesses effectively," said Suzie Squier, president of RH-ISAC. "The Summit is our industry's premier event, and we're honored to provide a platform for leaders like Rachel Tobac to share their expertise."

In addition to her role as CEO of SocialProof Security , Tobac is a sought-after speaker whose expertise has been featured on NPR, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and CNN, as well as in The New York Times.

The RH-ISAC Cyber Intelligence Summit brings together cybersecurity professionals from across the retail, hospitality, and consumer-facing industries for three days of professional development, collaboration, and networking. This year's agenda features presentations from experts representing such major brands as Target, Walmart, United Airlines, Marriott, Home Depot, and more. rhisac.org


Ransomware Plagues Ever Sector
How ransomware attacks like Columbus' happen
As Columbus continues to recover from last summer's ransomware attack, a new special project from Axios' Visuals team explains how such data breaches occur. Ransomware - in which hackers encrypt victims' computers and put sensitive information at risk until a ransom is paid - has plagued nearly every sector.

Hospitals, schools, publicly traded companies and even auto dealers have also faced service disruptions or had to shut down due to its impact.

Last year was likely the highest-grossing year for ransomware gangs in decades, with a company paying one gang a record-breaking $75 million. Though Columbus didn't pay a ransom to the group that claimed responsibility for the local breach, the city is now paying in other ways.

The attack, which involved a malicious download, compromised the sensitive data of over 500,000 people. Residents and others are eligible to sign up for two years of free Experian credit monitoring on the city's dime.

The city extended the credit monitoring enrollment deadline to March 31. Around 21,700 people had signed up as of last week, spokesperson Melanie Crabill tells Axios. axios.com


Security Challenges of AI
AI security posture management will be needed before agentic AI takes hold
As I'm currently knee deep in testing agentic AI in all its forms, as well as new iterations of current generative AI models such as OpenAI's O1, the complexities of securing AI bot frameworks for enterprise security teams are beginning to crystallize.

The first comparison that comes to mind is what we experienced during the "on-prem to cloud" days, when we were suddenly faced with limitations in our existing security toolsets.

Your on-prem vulnerability scanner, which was used to scan a database or VM server at an IP address, suddenly didn't know what an AWS S3 bucket or Azure Blob was. It could not understand the context of a Lambda function or even how to scan it, and you were left with "invisible" vulnerabilities because the scanner was effectively blind to these assets. This is how cloud-native application protection platforms (CNAPPs) - tools that could do both the traditional scanning and scanning of cloud assets - came to be.

We now are faced with a similar problem with agentic AI and what will soon be an entire fabric of interconnected agentic AI frameworks across your enterprise. helpnetsecurity.com


5,000+ SonicWall firewalls still open to attack

How the ransomware attack at Change Healthcare went down: A timeline