Retail briefs

Saks Inc. has appointed Rob Gruen president and ceo of its Parisian specialty department store division, effective June 4.

Parisian has 40 locations throughout the Midwest and Southeast, eight of which have home departments.

With 28 years of retail experience, Gruen was most recently executive vp of Warner Bros. Consumer Products, a position he held since 1997. He joined the company in 1994 as senior vp of retail business development and was subsequently promoted to senior vp of worldwide marketing and retail business development. Gruen replaces Travis Saucer, who recently resigned from the post.

Consolidated Stores has finalized the name change it first announced several months ago. Approved at its annual meeting last week, the company's new name is Big Lots, its most widely recognized store brand. Its NYSE ticker symbol will become BLI. All of Consolidated's brands, which include Odd Lots, MacFrugal's and Pic 'N' Save, will be converted to Big Lots over the next two years.

Lands' End has promoted Marcia Tabler to vp, creative operations, a new position. Tabler joined the retailer in February as director of creative operations, and previously served as vp, direct marketing for Warner Bros. Studio Stores. She reports to Lee Eisenberg, executive vp and creative director.

Hanover Direct has selected Coremetrics, a provider of data-driven business intelligence solutions, to provide detailed analysis of online customer behavior for nine Hanover Direct sites, including Domestications, Gump's and The Company Store. Coremetrics' systems include a data warehouse of complete and accurate online customer information for Web-specific analytics or extension to CRM and data mining applications.