TIMELINE

Jan. 12, 2006

WILLIAMS-SONOMA INC. said it will close its Hold Everything unit by the end of the year and fold it into its other brands. The announcement came as the retailer posted a 12% increase in net revenue to $868.7 million for the eight-week holiday period that ended last Dec. 25, compared with the same span in 2004. Contributing to the increase was a 16.4% jump in direct marketing revenue to $316.7 million, and a 4.5% rise in comparable store sales. Hold Everything, a marketer of storage and other home products, is comprised of 11 retail stores and a DM unit that reportedly mails more than 27 million catalogs a year. Williams-Sonoma expects to incur a charge between $10 million and $12 million for lease-termination costs for the Hold Everything stores, employee severance, write-off of the brand's Web site expenses and outlays for inventory impairment.

Jan. 9

THE U.S. SUPREME COURT apparently believes the University of Texas was within its rights to block unsolicited e-mail coming into its system. By declining to accept a challenge, the high court let stand a federal appeals court's ruling that the university did not violate the constitutional rights of White Buffalo Ventures when the school blocked 59,000 of the firm's e-mails in 2003. Austin, TX-based White Buffalo, which operates LonghornSingles.com, said its e-mail complied with all anti-spam laws and argued that the federal Can Spam Act of 2003 overrode the university's anti-spam policy. But the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against that interpretation in August, adding that the rules did not infringe White Buffalo's rights under the First Amendment.

Jan. 5

PRIMIS MARKETING GROUP acquired CoReg360, a provider of online lead-generation services for publishers and advertisers. There are no planned organizational changes for CoReg360. Jeff Wilkins will continue as the unit's president and general manager and will report to Primis president and CEO John Healy.