Early Sears closure list has 11 in Florida, none in Maine

Florida will be hit the hardest by the closing of Sears and Kmart stores, losing 11, according to a preliminary list of 79 planned closures released Thursday.

Ohio, Michigan and Georgia are close behind with six planned store closures. Tennessee, North Carolina and Minnesota are set to lose four stores each. No stores in Maine are on the list of 79, but the 125-year-old retailer plans to close up to 120 stores to raise cash.

A spokeswoman for Sears Holding Corp. said each store employs between 40 and 80 people.

Company sues ex-worker who kept his Twitter fans

An Internet company has sued one of its former employees, saying the worker cost the company thousands of dollars in lost business when he took 17,000 Twitter followers with him when he left the firm.

PhoneDog LLC filed a lawsuit in July against Noah Kravitz, a writer who worked for the Mount Pleasant, S.C., company from 2006 until last year. Attorneys for the website, which reviews mobile devices like phones and tablets, said Kravitz owes them $340,000.

The company said when Kravitz resigned, he changed his Twitter name from PhoneDog_Noah to noahkravitz, and kept his 17,000 followers. The company said the followers should be treated like a customer list, and therefore PhoneDog’s property. PhoneDog said Kravitz should pay $2.50 per follower per month for eight months, or a total of $340,000.

NYSE to drop falling stock of American Airlines’ parent

American Airlines’ parent company, which filed for bankruptcy protection last month, said Thursday that its stock will be dropped from the New York Stock Exchange.

The shares will stop trading on the NYSE before the opening bell next Thursday. The delisting includes AMR common stock and some company-issued notes.

AMR Corp. said the NYSE notified the Fort Worth, Texas, company of the move after the average closing price of AMR shares fell below $1 for 30 straight trading days.

The shares closed at $1.62 the day before the Nov. 29 bankruptcy filing and fell to 26 cents that day. They closed Thursday down 3 cents at 52 cents, and sank another 21 cents, or 40 percent, to 30 cents in after-hours trading.

Holiday sales online rose by double digits, firm says

In the annual race for holiday sales, a clear winner has emerged: online retail.

The sector has enjoyed steady double-digit growth over the past two months compared with last year, providing a stable counterpoint to the broader industry’s more volatile season. Cyber Monday alone raked in a record $1 billion, according to the analytics firm comScore.

The company said this week that online spending during the holidays reached more than $35 billion, a 15 percent spike from a year ago.

Toilet roll covers to get designer look from Adler

Kimberly-Clark is looking to shake up the toilet-paper accessory category with toilet roll covers from designer Jonathan Adler.

In order to boost awareness about a new version of its Cottonelle toilet paper, Kimberly-Clark Inc. decided to forgo traditional advertising and instead offer free, limited-edition boxes to cover your backup toilet paper supply.

Adler created the covers in three brightly colored geometric patterns. He’s known for bold colors and pop graphics and has brought his design to everything from home furnishings to hotels.

Adler, whose other designs include straws for extra-skinny Diet Pepsi cans, said he wanted the covers to be “bold, punchy and mood-enhancing.”

They’ll be available in January at respecttheroll.com for a shipping charge of $1.99 plus an offer code from a package of Cottonelle.

— From news service reports