The New York Times
Dick’s Sporting Goods said Wednesday morning it was immediately ending sales of all assault-style rifles in its stores. The retailer, ne of the nation’s largest sports vendors, also said that it would no longer sell high-capacity magazines and that it would not sell any gun to anyone under 21 years of age, regardless of local laws.
The New York Times
Row 7 Seed Company, a new business co-founded by Dan Barber, the executive chef at Blue Hill in Manhattan, aims to fill a gap by developing, promoting and selling seeds for new vegetable and grain varieties that might otherwise never find an audience. Row 7 aims to give breeders the chance to reach a big market with their most esoteric and groundbreaking work — by connecting them with chefs.
Wall Street Journal
General Electric will overhaul its board, removing several of the struggling company’s longest-serving members and nominating three outsiders, including an accounting expert and former top executives from American Airlines. The board changes come as GE executives have slashed the company’s dividend and financial projections in recent months while pledging to shed at least $20 billion in assets.
Fast Company
Fitbit’s membership base grew 10% last year to 25.4 million users. The company sold 5.4 million devices in Q4 and 15.3 million devices in full year 2017. However, Fitbit’s main market is the U.S., where earnings fell 13.4% to $330.2 million. Analysts were hoping for a break-even quarter, but Fitbit lost $45.5 million. Fitbit believes it will show $1.5 billion in revenue for full year 2018, well below analyst expectations of $1.73 billion.
New York Business Journal
Walmart is looking to branch out with clothing. The retail giant is debuting four private label brands to be available in Walmart stores and online
starting March 1. Items are expected to be priced between $5 and $30. The move is part of Walmart's push into the apparel space. It's also trying to one-up main rival Amazon, which has successfully won over fashion brands, scoring deals with Nike, Calvin Klein, Kate Spade and Levi Strauss.
USA Today
There's little advantage for most companies to stick with the National Rifle Association as public pressure after the mass shooting at a Parkland, Fla., high school pushes them to cut ties. But some companies have resisted. FedEx said it was keeping a discount deal for NRA members. Two other notable companies that have resisted increasingly strident calls to end financial relationships with the gun owners group are Apple and Amazon.
USA Today
More than a dozen companies have ended financial relationships with the NRA over the past several days but some companies have resisted calls to cut ties. FedEx said it was keeping a discount deal for NRA members, while issuing a statement that tried to distance its views on gun policy from the group's. The NRA has threatened retaliation for the severed business deals.
The Drive
Intel, which broke a Guinness World Record with its 1,218 Shooting Star drone light show during the 2018 Winter Olympic Games Opening Ceremony, wowed audiences again during the closing ceremony with 300 LED-fitted unmanned aerial vehicles whirring above the stadium. The choreographed drone fleet formed aerial illustrations like the Olympic mascot, a white tiger named Soohorang.
USA Today
The collaboration among Amazon, JPMorgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway seeking to transform the American health care system is being taken seriously — and for good reason. The challenge is monumental. Health care spending represented 17.9% of the U.S. economy in 2016, totaling about $10,348 per person, and continues to rise, according to the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
CNN.com
Could big brands save millions of dollars a year and help preserve the environment just by slightly changing their logos? French graphic designer Sylvain Boyer has started a project to demonstrate it. All it takes, he says, is to redesign the logos to use less ink. The changes are subtle, but since corporate giants print them so frequently and on so many different materials, just a small change can have a huge effect.