Staples announced a strategic growth plan that will accelerate the growth of its online businesses, restructure its internal organization and reduce its retail square footage in North America by 15 percent by the end of fiscal 2015. The retailer projects these changes will produce approximately $250m in pre-tax cost savings during this period.

Toys "R" Us CEO Jerry Storch has taken a light saber to the idea that the future belongs to the internet and that big box retailers are doomed to irrelevance. Storch says the successful brands will be those with a consumer-facing network across all channels, and says Toys "R" Us is leveraging its strengths, including its store base, to grow and thrive over the long term.

Following tests that showed mobile POS successfully sped up the checkout process in its Rack stores, Nordstrom will roll out approximately 1,500 of the devices to its 110 Rack units by the end of Q3. This deployment is in addition to the mobile POS technology already in use in Nordstrom's 117 full-line stores.

Hallmark Cards Inc. selected Fujitsu to provide a cloud-based, retail-as-a-service (RaaS) solution for its more than 2,500 independent retailers and corporate stores in the U.S. Hallmark and its independent retailers will use a monthly subscription model to cover a combination of Fujitsu TeamPoS and third-party hardware, software, support, maintenance and data center hosting services. The contract calls for the solution to be deployed over the next three years.

JCPenney CEO Ron Johnson is going all in with his bid to remake the customer experience at the century-old department store retailer. A mobile POS deployment beginning this fall is just the first step in an ambitious plan involving storewide use of RFID to eliminate traditional cash wrap stations, allowing anywhere, anytime checkout, including self-checkout, by 2014.

Technology and infrastructure investments will account for 50 percent of Pier 1 Imports' $70m to $75m in planned capital expenditures this year, but the retailer will have a lot of IT-enabled activity to show for its money. Two of the biggest elements are the July 28 launch of Pier 1's new e-commerce site and the planned rollout of its new POS system beginning this fall.

Best Buy is viewed by many analysts as being in a desperate fight for its life. In previous years its stellar financial results were strongly fueled by the collapse of such competitors as PC America and Circuit city. But now Best Buy is the last man standing and its survival is entirely dependent on its own efforts to respond to marketplace shifts.