Content about Economy of the United States

Of all the Home Depot metrics that were reported in its second quarter — including double-digit earnings gains — the comparable-store sales metric of positive 2.1% doesn’t jump off the page.

Expectations are high that mobile payments represent the future of commerce, and a group of leading retailers this week formed a new organization to offer an alternative way to pay.

The group, Merchant Customer Exchange, will integrate a range of consumer offers, promotions and retail programs available via any smartphone. Participating retailers include Wal-Mart, Lowe's, Sears Holdings Corp. and Target. Additional members are expected to be announced in the coming months.  

A report released Monday by the Associated Press said that Sears Holdings Corp. would be spinning off its Hometown and Outlet stores, along with some hardware stores, into a separate, publicly traded company.

Earlier this year, Sears had revealed it would split the companies but had not indicated the new organization would be a separate public entity.

Orchard Supply Hardware will open a 50,000-sq.-ft. store in Torrance, Calif., showcasing the company’s new store format. 

The South Bay store at 19330 Hawthorne Blvd., the site of a former Kmart store, will open Sept. 1 and marks the company’s 89th store in the state of California.

Against the backdrop of a slowly recovering economy, Home Channel News has once again published its Top 300 Industry Scoreboard — the 300 leading home improvement and building material retailers ranked by sales for the most recent fiscal year. For the second consecutive year, the sales of the Top 300 retailers showed a positive increase over the previous year.

Sears Holdings Corp. has announced plans to pursue a partial spinoff of its interest in Sears Canada.

The move will reduce the Hoffman Estates, Ill.-based Sears Holdings’ stake in Sears Canada from 95% to about 51%, the company said. 

A tie-down tool called LoopRopes, designed to help safely transport cargo in the back of a truck or car, will find its way into Wal-Mart Stores, according to the Medford, Ore. Based supplier.

Wal-Mart Stores ordered more than 11,000 "LoopRopes" for 1,100 Wal-Marts from the company, making it Jeff Dahl’s largest wholesale order since inventing the product just over two years ago.  

The Home Channel Hall of Fame will welcome Do it Best Corp. CEO Bob Taylor during an induction ceremony at the 2012 National Hardware Show in Las Vegas.

The Home Channel Hall of Fame has been recognizing outstanding service to the hardware and home improvement industry since 2004. Recent inductees include Larry Stone (2011), president emeritus of Lowe’s, and Pat Farrah (2010), one of the original founders of The Home Depot.

Dev Mukherjee, president of the home appliances business at Sears for the past 16 months, has departed the company, according to an article in the Chicago Tribune. A replacement will be named “in a few weeks,” according to a Sears spokesman.

The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) has announced a comprehensive reform plan for the housing finance system that would transition Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to a new mortgage securitization system for single-family and multi-family conventional mortgages.

Sears quietly added all nine of its Great Indoors stores to the list of store closings on Feb. 23.

Store managers were informed on Thursday, a Sears spokeswoman confirmed, but no exact date has been given for the closings.  

The upscale remodeling and home décor stores began opening in 1998, long before the Sears and Kmart merger. At one point, Sears operated 20 of the units, but they were never a big moneymaker for the company. 

The Home Depot this week announced fourth-quarter sales of $16 billion, a 5.9% increase over the same quarter last year. What happened? From Craig Menear's perspective, the answer involves execution, warm weather and strength in maintenance and repair categories.