‘Surfer’ Magazine Publishes Its First Print Issue In 5 Years (mediapost.com)

The ACMA is excited to release the agenda for our upcoming virtual National Forum. Registartion will be announced very soon, but for now, please save the dates and plan on attending. Here are the key facts: No 'Zoom overload' promised! This year’s Forum will be held entirely via a series of Zoom meetings. Following an opening session focused on the upcoming elections on September 2nd, there will be back-to-back 45-minute online sessions held on the three subsequent Wednesdays. Cost & Attendance: Although the issues and focus will on C-level executives, attendance is complementary to all catalog/online/direct merchants and their suppliers, both ACMA members and non-members, as long as you completely fill out the brief registration form (coming soon). See the agenda at: https://catalogmailers.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/ACMA-Virtual-Forum-Agenda-2020.pdf - click read more below for additional info

*Comparable sales down 1.5% on an owned basis and down 1.6% on an owned-plus-licensed basis; up 4.3% and 4.4%, respectively, versus the second quarter of 2019. *Digital sales decreased 5% year-over-year while increasing 37% versus the second quarter of 2019. *Macy’s comparable sales were down 2.9% on an owned basis and down 2.8%, on an owned-plus-licensed basis. *Bloomingdale’s comparable sales on an owned basis were up 8.8% and on an owned-plus-licensed basis were up 5.8%. *Bluemercury comparable sales were up 7.6% on an owned and owned-plus-licensed basis. *Inventory turnover, on a trailing twelve-month basis, was relatively flat to 2021 and improved 15% over 2019. *Gross margin for the quarter was 38.9%, down from 40.6% in the second quarter of 2021.

The Postal Service is putting an early step in its network modernization plan on hold, after a bipartisan group of senators told the agency to slow down implementation. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) in a letter last week that USPS will pause the movement of mail processing operations at facilities across the country. Nearly 60 USPS facilities — out of 427 — have initiated Mail Processing Facility Reviews to determine whether the agency should move some of its mail processing operations to larger regional hubs. DeJoy told Peters USPS will put these changes on hold “at least” until Jan. 1, 2025. “Even then, we will not advance these efforts without advising you of our plans to do so, and then only at a moderated pace of implementation,” DeJoy wrote in a May 9 letter.