Black Friday is quickly approaching, and consumers need to know where they’ll be fighting other shoppers for the best discounts. Here are some of the past month’s brick-and-mortar openings and closings, as brands prepare for what should be an intense holiday shopping season.

Target

As has been widely reported, Target very publicly closed a handful of locations over the past few months due to concerns over retail theft. However, the chain is trying its hand at a few new locations in New York City.

Marks and Spencer

Major UK retailer Marks and Spencer (M&S) is gearing up for its biggest month in terms of store openings this month. The chain is slated to open six new stores and renew three more—a move that will bring more than 2,200 jobs to the UK, according to Fresh Produce Journal.

Amazon

Amazon’s two-year experiment in the brick-and-mortar apparel space came to close when the company announced last week that it would be shutting down its two Amazon Style locations in Los Angeles and Columbus, Ohio.

Keep reading here.—KM

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It’s starting to feel a lot like—gesundheit!—cold and flu season, and a TV spot for Vicks NyQuil Severe Honey is in high rotation, having aired 3,734 times between August 14 and November 9, according to iSpot, a TV measurement company.

The 15-second commercial would appeal to everyone’s favorite ursine denizen of the Hundred Acre Wood, mentioning “honey” five times and “honeylicious” once. The commercial depicts honey descending from a wooden dripper, as does its packaging, which has a dispenser cup shaped like a beehive.

It’s no wonder why a cold remedy would want to be associated with honey, a demulcent whose effectiveness at coating and soothing throats is borne out in numerous studies.

But for all it does to associate itself with honey, there’s something curious about Vicks NyQuil Severe Honey: It doesn’t list honey as an ingredient.

Keep reading here.—AAN

On Wednesdays, we wear pink spotlight Retail Brew’s readers. Want to be featured in an upcoming edition? Click here to introduce yourself.

We’re getting to know Terry O’Neil, managing director and head of connected commerce and strategic growth at Citi Retail Services.

How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in retail? Citi Retail Services provides payment solutions to some of the largest retail brands in the US. We are the company behind many of the co-brand and private-label credit cards you see when you are checking out at your favorite retailer (think The Home Depot, Macy’s, etc.) and we have been doing this for more than 30 years. In my role specifically, I’m charged with building and launching Citi Retail Services’s expansion strategies related to point-of-sale lending which include bringing new products to market—like Citi Pay Credit, a digital-only credit card—and other flexible payment methods.

One thing we can’t guess about your job from your LinkedIn profile? Throughout my career my roles have been intrapreneurial in nature—working to build new capabilities and businesses within large, well-established financial service leaders. These roles have required me to navigate internal and external partnerships to identify pathways which drive enhanced value for consumers and revenue growth.

What’s your favorite project you’ve worked on? While it is difficult to choose one, I am most excited about the work I am doing now to build Citi Pay, Citi’s embedded payment solution that gives participating retailers the ability to offer their customers access to more payment flexibility.

Keep reading here.—EC