News Briefs

Grocery retailer SpartanNash has promoted David Sisk to executive vice president, chief customer officer. In the new role, Sisk will manage customer engagement for national accounts, independent and chain grocers, e-commerce retailers, and the U.S. Defense Commissary Agency and global military exchanges. 

Sisk was first hired in 2020 as president of the company’s military arm before being promoted to chief customer officer in May 2022. Prior to joining the company, he served as president and COO of OSC-WEBco, where he managed global strategic plans, P&L, personnel, and global operations for the company's military divisions and more than 100 retail categories. 

He also brings a background with P&G, overseeing U.S. and global shopper-based design and conceptual platform innovation.

"David's role is vital to delivering on our signature strength to be the most customer-focused, innovative food solutions company," said SpartanNash CEO Tony Sarsam in a statement. "He and his team have greatly enhanced the support and services we provide to our customers, helping the company grow market share in our wholesale distribution business."

On April 25, 2023, the convenience store retailers will host a mass hiring event across more than 13,000 locations in the U.S. and Canada. The family of companies hopes to collectively recruit over 50,000 new employees ahead of the busy summer season. 

Interested applicants can apply in-store on the day itself between 10 am - 4 pm local time, or apply online by visiting the retailers’ career pages. 

• See Also: Managing Talent: Win-Win Workforce Management Strategies for the Retail Frontline

“Every year, National Hiring Day marks an exciting time for our brands. Expanding store teams with the addition of 50,000 new roles will help our brands gear up for the busy summer season and our favorite day of the year, Slurpee Day,” said Treasa Bowers, senior VP of human Resources at 7-Eleven. “We're proud to offer our newest employees at corporate-owned locations a variety of career benefits including flexible work schedules and competitive pay, and we're looking forward to growing our 7-Eleven, Speedway and Stripes family.”

It’s crunch time for many retailers staring down a busy summer season and ongoing labor shortages. The hourly in-store retail employee turnover rate in 2022 was 76%, according to Korn Ferry, and companies continue to strategize in order to retain and attract hard-to-find staff. Common tactics include raising hourly wages; offering increased schedule and pay flexibility; career development and learning opportunities; and equipping and empowering employees with intuitive new technologies to make their jobs less repetitive. 

The Vitamin Shoppe has chosen to deploy HughesON Managed Network Services across its 700-plus U.S. retail outlets. The Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) solution from Hughes Network Systems provides The Vitamin Shoppe with a secure Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) that supports the company's vision for growth across retail, digital and franchise outlets.

"Hughes designed, deployed and manages our enterprise network with the flexibility, scalability, security and dependability we require to best empower our customers on their journeys of lifelong wellness," said Andy Laudato, chief operating officer, The Vitamin Shoppe. "The Hughes team met our needs for secure, cloud-centered digital operations at every store, cost effectively and with an eye to the future."

With elements of a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) framework, the HughesON managed solution for The Vitamin Shoppe protects the network with security at every endpoint and transport, provides redundant transports for reliability and maximum uptime and employs automated policy orchestration for scalability, among other features.

"We consider it a privilege to support The Vitamin Shoppe in their digital transformation with a high-performing, next generation network that meets the company's business requirements today and into tomorrow," said Dan Rasmussen, senior vice president, Enterprise Division, Hughes. "With 'as-a-service' delivery combined with 24/7 end-to-end management, the Hughes network for The Vitamin Shoppe seamlessly operates and optimizes business applications – enabling the retailer to focus on its lifestyle offerings instead of worrying about its network."

Kroger Co.’s retail media arm, Kroger Precision Marketing (KPM) — powered by 84.51° — has received a platinum certification from the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG).

This marks the fourth consecutive year KPM has registered with the certification, which recognizes brands and tech providers who are fighting criminal activity and protecting brand safety across digital advertising. 

Kroger was one of just 23 companies to recently receive "TAG Platinum" status by successfully obtaining all three of TAG's certification seals:

• Brand Safety Certified: Minimizes the risk of advertising being placed on inappropriate or unsafe digital media, promoting industry-regulated brand safety standards and transparency.
• Certified Against Fraud: Combats fraud across the supply chain.
• Certified Against Malware: Provides companies with a strategy for tackling malware in advertising. 

According to Cara Pratt, SVP of KPM, digital marketers need to earn consumers’ trust every day. "The next generation of ad-supported media must be consumer-centric, and the standards we're upholding through TAG are foundational for improving the user experience."

• Also read: Kroger To Deploy Autonomous Box Trucks To Handle Dallas Middle Mile

"Kroger Precision Marketing has demonstrated its digital marketing leadership by achieving TAG's rigorous certifications in all three program areas: upholding brand safety, eliminating ad fraud, and combating malware," said Mike Zaneis, CEO of TAG, in a statement. "By implementing industry best practices across TAG's program areas, Kroger has shown its commitment to a safe, transparent, and crime-free digital advertising supply chain."

A recent survey of brand managers conducted by sister brand The Path to Purchase Institute ranked Kroger Precision Marketing as the No. 1 retail media network for audience, measurement, and traffic-driving capabilities. 

Levi Strauss & Co is now leveraging artificial intelligence to create virtual body-inclusive avatars that will supplement the company’s human models to increase diversity and elevate the consumer experience. 

Amy Gershkoff Bolles, global head of digital and emerging technology strategy at Levi Strauss & Co., shared the news during the recent Business of Fashion Professional Summit in New York City. The tech allows Levi’s to create “hyper-realistic models of every body type, age, size, and skin tone.”

Levi’s is working with LaLaLand.ai, an AI-powered digital fashion studio, to expand its model availability. Right now, the company’s e-commerce site and app typically showcases one model per product. The company hopes to increase the number of models to unlock a future “where we can enable more customers to see our products on more models that look like themselves, creating a more personal and inclusive shopping experience.”

• Read more: Levi’s Readies For DTC-Optimized On-Cloud ERP and Raises Bot Bar

“While AI will likely never fully replace human models for us, we are excited for the potential capabilities this may afford us for the consumer experience,” said Gershkoff Bolles. “We see fashion and technology as both an art and a science.” 

Levi’s said it will continue focusing on its digital transformation journey, balancing digital fundamentals while investing emerging tech that will improve the customer experience. 

In a recent blog post, Ulta Beauty’s senior cloud architect, Michael Alderson, outlined the company’s approach toward building a digital store strategy: transformational, digital touchpoints that deliver a redesigned, highly personalized, and compelling e-commerce experience. 

The company has been working with Google Cloud to achieve its goals since 2019, scaling a modern, containerized platform to support expedited app development, reduce operational stress, and elevate its e-commerce experience. 

The challenge: Bottlenecks in upgrading features and capabilities across e-commerce

The solution: Interconnected microservices that can scale independently 

Steps taken:

1. Find a new way to create and manage infrastructure
2. Analyze productivity impact to configure cloud “landing zones”
3. Determine how service mesh plays a role in managing large fleets of containerized microservices at scale
4. Use built-in metrics to auto-scale and auto-heal for a better guest experience
5. Eliminate the need for third-party services (Alderson said the company has saved several hundred thousand dollars in additional licensing fees by using the platform’s built-in traffic routing.)

The results: The Ulta Beauty IT team could create, manage, optimize, and secure container platforms for developers in record time. 

“We can better quantify guest experiences because we see errors, reporting, and where we haven’t gotten it right yet. It enables our software development and release processes (DevOps) to mature, leading to better business choices and better guest experiences,” said Alderson in the post.

Over the next year, Ulta will be leveraging the tech’s multi-region capabilities to improve application availability and disaster recovery.