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Boston Globe
5 days ago
- Business
- Boston Globe
Scott Eckert believes in e-commerce, taking over as Americas CEO at Mirakl in Boston
Advertisement Eckert joins at a time when Mirakl is expanding its e-commerce offerings, including software for sellers to upload their catalogs and coordinate the online venues where they sell their goods, new advertising options, as well as new software for business-to-business sellers. Mirakl's Boston base can be traced back to a decision more than a decade ago by Mirakl executive Kamal Kirpalani to persuade co-chief executive Adrien Nussenbaum to make the Boston area its launchpad in the United States instead of New York. (Kirpalani, now chief revenue officer, has fond memories of attending Boston University as an undergrad.) Mirakl relocated its local corporate office from Somerville to 100 Summer St. in downtown Boston two years ago, and 108 of the company's roughly 800 employees are based there today. Advertisement Eckert led Rethink Robotics before joining Bain Capital Ventures for a stint as an executive in residence in 2019, and then was hired by Walmart to oversee a portfolio of the retail giant's tech ventures. That work ended last year, and his former colleagues at Bain Capital Ventures suggested he check out Mirakl for his next act. (Bain Capital Ventures is among Mirakl's investors.) He found Mirakl's potential for growth, particularly in the United States, to be appealing. 'I was interested in getting into a Boston-based CEO position running an interesting business [and] this one was by far the most interesting,' Eckert said. 'I knew that this was the best technology in the industry.' Fuel supplier fumes over MassDOT pick Of the six bidders for the state's big service plaza redevelopment lease, only two are based in Massachusetts. And now one of those local bidders, Waltham-based fuel supplier Global Partners , is fuming: It was passed over in favor of Applegreen , an Irish company backed by private equity giant Blackstone , for the hefty 35-year contract to redo the state's 18 highway service plazas. Last Wednesday, Massachusetts Department of Transportation board's capital planning committee recommended Applegreen's bid to the full MassDOT board for approval. Applegreen committed to invest $750 million in improvements, including full replacements of nine plaza buildings, and to pay the state an average of at least $28 million a year. It didn't take long for Global and a nonprofit partner, CommonWealth Kitchen , to express their dismay. On Friday afternoon, Global issued a press release urging MassDOT's board to reconsider the Applegreen recommendation at a meeting this Wednesday. Max Slifka , Global's senior vice president of real estate, said in a statement that Global would pay roughly 50 percent more in rent than Applegreen would. He added that state highway officials are missing an opportunity to invest in a business with 'deep Massachusetts roots' rather than handing off this important infrastructure 'to outsiders with no proven stake in our state.' Advertisement Global already runs four service plazas that Applegreen would take over in 2027, at rest stops on Route 6 in Barnstable, Route 24 in Bridgewater, and Route 128 in Beverly. Most of the others are along the Mass. Pike, and run by McDonald's and Gulf. (McDonald's was not a bidder this time around, but Gulf owner RaceTrac was.) A MassDOT spokeswoman said Applegreen was picked because of its demonstrated preparedness for the job and its track record of successful operations in other states. (Boston-based Suffolk Construction is Applegreen's general contractor on the bid.) Jen Faigel , chief executive of the CommonWealth Kitchen food-business incubator, said she saw the service plaza project as a way to broaden the nonprofit's work with Global. The two organizations had previously started discussing ways to get more locally made products into Global convenience stores, and then developed plans to sell some of the foods made by CommonWealth Kitchen businesses at the rest areas if Global were to win the bid. 'It was very surprising to me that a proposal like Global's didn't win,' Faigel said. 'For me, it just seemed like a missed opportunity, to not . . . support a business like this.' BJ's gets bigger on its home turf With a big presence in its home state of Massachusetts, BJ's Wholesale Club chief executive Bob Eddy has looked elsewhere for expansion in recent years. However, with the success of the Advertisement Toward that end, BJ's announced it's building a store in Springfield, its first new club in Massachusetts in 13 years — as it opens stores at a clip of 10 to 15 a year. The pace is much faster lately, compared to the days in the mid-2010s when BJ's was only opening one or two a year, or none at all. The chain had 215 stores at the time of its 2018 initial public offering. That number is now up to 255. The other Western Mass. stores include locations in Greenfield, Pittsfield, and Chicopee. Springfield, Eddy said, will open by the end of the year. About 100 to 150 people will work at the new store, typical for a BJ's (though a warehouse going up in Ohio will run almost entirely on robot labor). 'Once we started to turn the ship around from a new club perspective, . . . we started looking around the chain about where we wanted to put new locations [within our existing footprint],' Eddy said. 'We've already heard a lot from the community now that they know we're coming.' BJ's is still smaller than its wholesale club rivals, Costco and Walmart -owned Sam's Club. But Eddy says his company offers lower prices than supermarkets while offering more variety than its two big club competitors — a recipe that has proven attractive to customers, new and old. 'It's causing us to try to accelerate even more,' Eddy said. 'People have been through a lot from an inflation perspective in the past couple of years [and] we're just a great destination when people want to save money.' Advertisement A new tune comes to Logan Add Logan Airport to Boston's long list of live-music venues this summer. Yes, you heard that correctly: Professional musicians and college students will perform in the baggage claim areas of terminals B and C in July and August as a test run to see if it improves the experience of travelers stuck waiting for their luggage to roll out. Massachusetts Port Authority chief executive Rich Davey announced the initiative at a Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce meeting on Thursday. 'One of the top five customer complaints: 'It takes too much time to get my bags at baggage claim,'' Davey told the chamber crowd. 'The perception [is] our baggage claim is slow. How can we make sure we're keeping folks entertained or amused at baggage claim? We're going to start some live music and see if that works.' The news prompted Brendan Joyce , public policy manager at Lyft , to pose a light-hearted question to Davey during the Q&A portion of the event. 'Rich, I have a very important question for you,' Joyce said. 'Are you performing live this summer at baggage claim, and if so, originals or covers?' Davey didn't miss a beat: 'If we want customer satisfaction to improve, no, I will not be performing.' Jon Chesto can be reached at
Boston Globe
11-06-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
MassDOT taps Irish firm Applegreen to redevelop 18 highway service plazas
Applegreen would completely replace buildings at nine of the 18 service plazas, and make significant retrofits to the others. In total, Applegreen has pledged to make $750 million in capital improvements over the life of the contract. The company also would share a portion of the revenue it earns at these plazas with the state, totaling at least $28.4 million a year on average over the contract term — or nearly $1 billion that would go to the state over time. MassDOT chief development officer Scott Bosworth told the board members that Applegreen would also improve traffic flow at many of the rest stops. One goal is to reduce conflicts between truckers and car drivers as part of reconfigurations that will add nearly 500 new spaces across the rest areas, a 24 percent increase. Advertisement 'They have demonstrated real-world experience in turning over these facilities, and state-of-the-art revitalization programs,' Bosworth said of Applegreen. 'We feel we've got a strong partner, we're excited about this partnership [and] we're on the cusp of beginning a new day for our service plazas in Massachusetts.' Advertisement The contract, which has a 10-year extension option, will take effect on Jan. 1, 2026 for 14 of the 18 service areas: the 11 on the turnpike, plus rest areas in Lexington, Newton, and Plymouth; Applegreen is slated to replace McDonald's as the food concessionaire and Gulf for the fuel. The contract for the other four plazas — currently operated by Waltham-based petroleum supplier Global Partners in Bridgewater, Barnstable, and Beverly — will switch over on June 30, 2027. There isn't much time to make the transition, with leases expiring in six months on most of the plazas. Applegreen was picked in part because of its readiness to get started with the extensive permitting and construction work necessary. Its team includes general contractor Suffolk Construction and designers at Upland Architects. Active in the US since 2014, Applegreen has been expanding in this country lately, fueled in large part by Blackstone after the private equity firm acquired a controlling stake in 2021. Applegreen is wrapping up a 27-area redevelopment in New York; Bosworth said the Applegreen team that's leading the New York project will move over to Massachusetts. An Applegreen spokesperson offered a brief statement when asked about the committee's vote on Wednesday: 'We're proud of our proposal, and hope to have the opportunity to work with the state and MassDOT to improve the travel experiences of drivers across Massachusetts.' MassDOT's procurement process has been shrouded in secrecy until now — a fact that irked Quincy Mayor Tom Koch, a MassDOT board member. 'I'm disappointed I didn't have more information ahead of time,' Koch said. 'This is a big vote. I just think we're just kind of glossing over ... a major vote of this board.' Advertisement Bosworth told Koch that he would have preferred to share more information but was advised by MassDOT legal counsel to limit the public information on the process while the procurement was still ongoing. At Wednesday's meeting, Bosworth disclosed that six companies had made initial bids for the service-plaza contract last fall: Love's Travel Stops, 7-Eleven, Applegreen, Gulf owner RaceTrac, Global, and fuel distributor Energy North. Among other things, MassDOT's original bidding documents called for Applegreen has promised to keep operating bathroom and gas services at the rest areas while they are under construction, Bosworth said, and to not shut down two consecutive plaza buildings along the turnpike at the same time. Susan Snyder, a top lawyer at MassDOT, told the planning committee that the state faces a big financial risk if a new operator isn't chosen soon. Six months, she said, is the minimum amount of time necessary to transition to a new rest stop operator, and MassDOT wouldn't have much leverage if negotiations were needed to extend the leases beyond Jan. 1. 'There's just a ton of work that has to be done,' Bosworth said. 'Having said that, we have selected an operator that has proven they can do it under the gun.' Advertisement Jon Chesto can be reached at
Boston Globe
06-05-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
What's the most pressing concern for big companies this earnings season? Hint: It starts with ‘T.'
The shift is no surprise, given the stock market's violent reaction to " Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Executives on these earning calls present a stoic front: Most don't sound all that happy about the turn of events, though they don't criticize the president directly for picking trade fights with other countries. The prices on everything from aluminum cans to Dungeons & Dragons box sets could be affected. Just how much gets passed on to clients and consumers will vary greatly, from business to business and product to product. Advertisement Consider Cambridge-based energy company GE Vernova, where chief executive Scott Strazik and chief financial officer Kenneth Parks probably would have preferred fielding questions about order backlogs and Advertisement Instead, they responded to queries about how the Trump tariffs are resulting in an additional $300 million to $400 million in inflationary costs this year for the company, though the executives will continue to try to 'mitigate' the impacts (to use the buzzword of the moment). If it's any consolation to Strazik and his crew, their former colleagues at For GE Vernova, the supersized tariff that Trump is imposing on Chinese imports is the biggest headache, though the broader tariffs of 10 percent for numerous other countries aren't helping matters. But for now, at least, GE Vernova is holding firm on its overall outlook for 2025. On the same day as GE Vernova's earnings, Waltham-based lab equipment supplier Thermo Fisher Scientific warned of a '$400 million headwind' in 2025 from the China tariff, because of the effects on China-sourced parts and China's retaliatory tariffs on products that Thermo Fisher makes in America and ships to that country. Also that day, Marlborough-based Boston Scientific chief executive Michael Mahoney forecast a $200 million hit to his company from the tariffs this year. As a result, BSX is Advertisement Hasbro, meanwhile, is speeding away from China as quickly as it can, with hundreds of items currently made in China being moved to factories in other countries by the end of this year. Chief financial officer Gina Goetter said Hasbro execs hope to be making fewer than 40 percent of its products in China by 2026. Hasbro, based in Pawtucket, R.I., is moving hundreds of items currently made in China to factories in other countries by the end of this year. Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff CEO Chris Cocks seemed happy to report that the Pawtucket company is still making most of its board games, such as Monopoly, at a factory in Cocks said he is accelerating a $1 billion cost savings plan as a result of the tariffs. And he had just announced he's putting off a decision about whether to move the company headquarters to Boston or stay closer to home in Providence. Meanwhile, the bad news keeps piling up. Teradyne's customers in the semiconductor sector are pulling back, preventing the North Reading-based manufacturer from offering any financial predictions beyond the current quarter. Boston Beer executives got peppered with questions about how tariffs are driving up expenses and driving down consumers' thirst for Sam Adams. And at New Britain-based tool maker Stanley Black & Decker, executives said that Not everyone seems to be worrying, though. Michael Battles at Norwell-based Clean Harbors promised that tariff concerns are 'a winner for us' in part because it could mean more reshoring of manufacturing in the US; that in turn means factories here will have more industrial waste to discard, possibly to Clean Harbors crews. And at Yankee Candle parent Newell Brands, chief executive Chris Peterson boasted that his company is well positioned to benefit from the craziness — he used the phase 'global trade alignment' ― after a 'period of temporary disruption.' That's primarily because the company had already started aggressively moving production out of China to other countries. Advertisement Citi analyst James Hardiman seemed to sum up the tumult perfectly, when he asked the Hasbro executives this simple question on their call: 'How do you even make decisions in this current environment?' Cocks replied by saying he's assuming the US will get to a 'reasonable and logical trade policy ultimately, once all the negotiations are done.' Can Hardiman and other analysts take that to the Monopoly bank? That remains to be seen. For now, these earning season comments sure make Trump's trade fights look like a roll of the dice. Jon Chesto can be reached at
Boston Globe
19-04-2025
- Sport
- Boston Globe
Boston Marathon will offer sensory-friendly area along course for spectators with autism, other needs
Laura Amico and her son, who has autism, watch the 2024 Boston Marathon. This year, the family will be watching from a sensory-friendly area the BAA is staging for the first time. (Laura Amico) Laura Amico This year, Amico and her son will be watching the race from a Campbell said the move builds on the Boston Marathon's work over the past several decades to make the race accessible to para athletes. The Advertisement 'This year is really the chance to turn that spotlight on the spectators and make sure we're not just taking care of our participants and being inclusive there, but we want everyone coming,' Campbell said. Amico was the one to inspire the BAA to create a designated area for people with sensory difficulties; she called the association with her experience and idea after the marathon last year. Advertisement 'While I was there, I was thinking it would be much easier to stay if the speakers were just a few blocks away and people didn't have cowbells,' Amico said. 'Those seemed like two really simple adjustments that would make the day so much easier for my family.' After that, BAA connected with the Flutie Foundation, a Waltham-based organization that aims to increase quality of life for people with autism. The organization has helped create BAA and Flutie found the perfect location for the sensory-friendly zone outside of Parsons Tolles Center, a senior citizen center in Wellesley. The center is located right along the course of the marathon, and spectators will have the entire sidewalk that runs along the center's property to watch from. The day of the marathon, the parking lot in front of the center will be empty, providing additional space for people to spread out and retreat from the race if they need to. In addition, the center will provide spectators with indoor access, including accessible bathrooms. There won't be a restriction on how much noise someone inside or outside the space can make, but the expectation is that people be mindful of people around them, Campbell said. 'It's going to be an opportunity for people to spectate the event without changing what the event is,' said Ethan Michaud, director of development for the Flutie Foundation. 'It just changes how they are able to experience it and knowing that they have the space to go that allows them that flexibility.' Advertisement In addition to the indoor space, the enclosed area has a parking lot in front of the sidewalk where spectators can watch the runners, offering enough space for people to spread out and engage in other activities if they need to, Campbell said. The area will be staffed by the Flutie Foundation and Boston Marathon volunteers. Michaud said Flutie will provide fidget toys, headphones, and ear plugs to spectators while preserving the original experience of the Boston Marathon. 'It's not an activity zone, not a silent zone, just a place where it can be what it needs to be for people who are attending,' Michaud said. 'People who benefit from these types of places want the opportunity to experience the event as it's meant to be experienced.' Campbell said BAA and Flutie will collect feedback from attendees and volunteers after the marathon with the goal of improving the area and possibly expanding it to other spots along the course in the future. The organizations are also 'We believe we're one of the first mass participation outdoor events to have this kind of area, so it's really exciting for us to see how it goes,' Campbell said. Last year, Amico's family left the marathon early because of how overwhelming it was for her son, and the family missed seeing friends run the marathon. This year, Amico's family will be watching from Wellesley. 'I'm just so thrilled that BAA took the idea and ran with it,' she said. 'For me, to have the kids see people who have worked hard to be the best of the best and have an opportunity to see those people is something that I want them to be included in.' Advertisement Emily Spatz can be reached at
Boston Globe
24-03-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
The Globe's Top Places to Work nominations are now open for 2025
'I am challenged to be better on a daily basis.' 'I am comfortable failing and encouraged to try new things.' These are just a few of the glowing comments from employees at companies that made The Boston Globe's really love their jobs. Related : If you feel the same way, now's the time to speak up. Nominations are being accepted for the 18th annual employer rankings, a free process open to any organization with 50 or more workers in Massachusetts — public, private, nonprofit, or government. Companies are evaluated by their employees using a 25-question survey conducted by the Globe's research partner, Energage, which administers employee surveys in 65 markets. Last year, 67,950 Massachusetts employees were surveyed at 323 companies, and 175 winners made the list in four size categories. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The recognition also makes for a useful recruiting tool. Advertisement At Waltham-based Lamacchia Realty, the No. 1 large company for the last two years, there's a 'buzz' after the results are announced, from employees as well as from clients and vendors, said Kim Beaulieu, the company's vice president of human resources. 'Earning a Top Places to Work award is a distinctive mark of excellence, setting companies apart in a recognizable way,' Eric Rubino, Energage's chief executive, said in a statement. 'Companies that earn this recognition embody the highest standards, and this award, rooted in authentic employee feedback, should be a point of immense pride.' These companies also have amazing perks. A few of our favorites over the years: pajama day, complete with pancakes and eggs for lunch; a quarterly drawing for two bonus weeks of vacation; and a dunk tank where employees get to soak the executives. The deadline for company nominations is April 25. The list of winners, and stories about what sets them apart, will be published later this year. Go to Katie Johnston can be reached at
