Winter Holidays

Sports Authority is joining other top retailers with plans to fortify their employee ranks for the holidays.

The sporting goods retailer announced it will hire 3,500 temporary employees across the country to meet consumer demand during the 2015 holiday season. All Sports Authority locations will begin hiring in mid-October and continue through December. Sports Authority plans to convert hundreds of seasonal workers into permanent Team Members after the holidays.

Yorkdale Shopping Centre in Toronto is hoping to engage holiday shoppers with a series of pop-up shops and a online/texting messaging concierge service.

Yorkdale's holiday pop up shops include:

Most U.S. shoppers dislike Black Friday, but a third of them say they're planning to spend more than $500 that weekend anyway, according to a new survey.

Sports Authority is joining other top retailers with plans to fortify their employee ranks for the holidays.

The sporting goods retailer announced it will hire 3,500 temporary employees across the country to meet consumer demand during the 2015 holiday season. All Sports Authority locations will begin hiring in mid-October and continue through December. Sports Authority plans to convert hundreds of seasonal workers into permanent Team Members after the holidays.

As the holiday season creeps up and Black Friday is just around the corner, successful companies are finalizing plans to maximize their seasonal revenues. A holiday retail sales forecast from eMarketer estimates a year-over-year increase of 5.7%, hitting an all-time high of $886 billion. To help retailers capture a larger slice of the expanding holiday pie, digital marketing services company eClerx Digital has identified three top strategies focused on optimization.

This holiday season, merchants will see at least one major change from last year: the prevalence of mobile wallets, and consumers eager to use them.  The problem is, while many large merchants are prepared to accept mobile wallets, many smaller merchants are not.

Here’s a primer on the major mobile wallets, and what merchants need to know about each.

Best Buy has formed a retail partnership with the manufacturer of what is expected to be one of the hottest selling items in consumer electronics this holiday season.

The retailer is teaming up with Yuneec International to offer the Typhoon drone series, which includes the Typhoon Q500 4K and Typhoon G multicopters, as well as the Typhoon Wizard, a new ultra-lightweight remote control drone.