Consumer & Service

The son of Ann Hebert, now-former vice president and general manager of its North America division, has according to a Bloomberg report used a credit card in his mother's name to purchase sneakers for his resale business. Hebert has resigned from her post with immediate effect after being with the company for over 25 years.

Further reasons are still unknown at this point.

Ikea announced the end of the publication of its annual catalogue after 70 years due to an increasing shift to online browsing and shopping.

Konrad Grüss, an Ikea executive, said in a statement that the company has "taken the emotional but rational decision to respectfully end the successful career" of both the print and digital versions of the catalogue and that "turning the page with our beloved catalog is in fact a natural process since media consumption and customer behaviors have changed".

Ikea will release a smaller catalogue next year that will be "filled with great home furnishing inspiration and knowledge" to celebrates the catalogue's history.

Hamburg’s data protection commissioner has stated that H&M in Nuremberg had collected private information about employees including family issues and religious beliefs. The data had been collected on a network drive and had been accessible for up to 50 managers. The incident got public when the data had been briefly visible for all people on the network.

H&M has been fined €35.3 million and the company stated that the practices uncovered in Nuremberg did not align with the guidelines of the company.

The Swedish clothing company H&M announced that it is ending its cooperation with the Chinese supplier Huafu. The textile supplier, based in the Chinese province of Anhui, is said to have benefited from the forced labour system in the province, which is mainly inhabited by Muslim Uyghur people.

According to H&M, the company had an "indirect business relationship" with the supplier, even though there hadn't been any indications of forced labour, H&M decided to terminate the cooperation regardless.

After an invite-only phase, the first Amazon Fresh grocery store has opened its door to the public in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles. Amazon is also introducing Dash Carts, shopping carts featuring a scale and a variety of cameras and sensors to calculate your shopping total. Echo Show stations featuring Alexa will help customers find items and products in the store.

Peloton, the connected fitness-equipment company, reported a fiscal fourth-quarter profit of $89.1 million, the first-ever since the company went public a year ago. The company revenue totalled $607.1 million, up from $223 million a year ago.

During a conference call Thursday, the company CEO James Foley said: "The strong tailwind we experienced in March as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold has continued to propel the demand for our products into the fourth quarter and the first couple of months of the Q1 fiscal year 2021."

Smartphones dangling from trees became a usual sight near Amazon.com delivery stations and Whole Foods stores in the Chicago suburb thanks to an Uber-like app called Amazon Flex, that lets drivers make deliveries in their own cars.

Someone places several devices in a tree located close to the station where deliveries originate. Drivers then sync their own phones with the ones in the tree and wait nearby for an order pickup. 

For many with other jobs, it’s a way to earn extra money in their spare time. But with joblessness rising and unemployment payments shrinking, competition for such work has stiffened, and more people rely on it as their primary income source.

Demonstrators gathered outside Jeff Bezos' mansion Thursday and constructed a guillotine outside his front door to protest Amazon workers' wages. The protest came the day after Bezos became the wealthiest person in history, according to Forbes, with a net worth surpassed $200 billion.

Protesters, led by former warehouse worker and outspoken Amazon critic Christian Smalls, called on the company to raise its minimum wage to $30 per hour.

Apple announced Tuesday that its marketing boss Phil Schiller will step down from his role and serve as an “Apple Fellow” running the App Store and company events. Greg Joswiak will replace Schiller as Vice President of Worldwide Marketing.

"Phil has helped make Apple the company it is today and his contributions are broad, vast, and run deep. In this new role, he will continue to provide the incredible thought partnership, and guidance that have defined his decades at Apple," said Tim Cook in a press release.

Apple announced revenue of $59.7 billion and a net quarterly profit of $11.25 billion for the third fiscal quarter of 2020, which corresponds to the second calendar quarter of the year.

The company reported growth across all of its product lines for Q3, from the iPhone, which has seen slowed growth in recent years, to its booming wearables and services businesses. The iPhone revenue of $26.4 billion for the quarter, an increase from the year-ago quarter.

According to the consumer goods corporation Unilever, the sales of personal care items have decreased during the pandemic. Likely reason for this is the social distancing and limited socialisation of people and working from home during the pandemic.

Contrary to the decrease of consumer goods sales, such as deodorant, makeup and other personal products, the sales of ice-cream have increased by 15% in the first quarter and by 26% in the second quarter.

Walmart announced on Wednesday that it would require all customers to wear a mask or face covering when entering its stores, following other large retailers such as Best Buy, Costco and Apple. Walmart's face covering policy will take effect on July 20 in around 5,000 – roughly 65% – of its stores.