RETAIL NEWS

WASHINGTON — Hearing aids addressing mild to moderate hearing loss are soon headed to a retail pharmacy near you. President Donald Trump last week signed into law the "FDA Reauthorization Act of 2017," which included the bipartisan Over-the-Counter Hearing Aid Act.

The biggest retail deal of 2017 has just been cleared by the Federal Trade Commission.

On Wednesday morning, shareholders of Whole Foods Market voted to approve the natural grocer's $13.7 billion acquisition by Amazon. In the late afternoon, the FTC gave the green light to the deal.

NOTTINGHAM, England — Boots UK announced Wednesday that it has partnered with IRI to develop and operate a range of world-class customer insight tools for its product brands.

“The formula for growth is simple. There’s really only three levers you can pull — find new buyers, get your buyers to spend more and/or raise prices,” said Chris Morley, president of fast-moving consumer goods, or FMCG, and retail at Nielsen. “But talk to most retailers and FMCG companies today, and they’ll tell you that growth is increasingly hard to find.”

AMITYVILLE, N.Y. — Skin care and hair care company Sundial Brands on Monday announced its debut on Black Enterprise Magazine’s BE 100s List as the tenth largest black-owned business in America. With a national reach of 35,000 major retailers, an increasing focus on its global strategy and a continual emphasis on new innovations, Sundial is also the only beauty and personal care manufacturer to make this year’s list. 

The average household spends $3,400 on packaged goods, but the average grocery banner only captures as much as 20% of that, according to a recent IRI report. “With the overall market not growing, retailers and manufacturers need to find new sources of growth by capturing a bigger piece of the existing pie,” wrote Web Fletcher, principal at IRI Shopper Analytics and lead author of IRI’s “Delivering Growth Through High-Value Customers” research, which was published in July.

SAN DIEGO — The California Product Stewardship Council this week presented Walgreens with the 2017 Infinity Arrow Award for Service and Take Back in recognition of the company’s Safe Medication Disposal program. The disposal program, launched last year, is the first ongoing national effort of its kind by a retailer to combat the national drug abuse crisis, the company said.