Winter Holidays

Petaluma, Calif. – During the second week of the holiday shopping season (Dec. 1-7), smartphone and tablet shoppers were especially generous spenders. According to data compiled by e-commerce software provider MarketLive, year-over-year online revenue generated by consumers using smartphones grew 107%, or slightly more than double.  

San Francisco – To serve the needs of tech-oriented holiday shoppers, “Wired” is opening a pop-up store in New York City and an e-shop at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). The annual holiday pop-up in New York showcases items hand-selected by “Wired” editors and curators, and will be open Dec. 11-21.    

By Alex Romanov, iSign Media   The holiday season is a time of family, food, and frenzied shopping. Consumers are bombarded by messages, promotions, discounts, and offers, and retailers have to be smart about how they reach out to their customers. Email blasts or paper coupons just won’t cut it. In this mobile-obsessed era, proximity marketing is a powerful way to break through the noise and bring shoppers into your store.   

Menomonee Falls, Wis. – Consumers who want to shop at odd hours to avoid dealing with holiday crowds will have plenty of opportunities at Kohl’s. Kohl’s Department Stores will keep its doors open for more than 100 hours straight from 6 a.m. on Friday, Dec. 19 through 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve, Wednesday, Dec. 24.  

ECRM compared retail circular advertising in November 2013 vs. November 2014 and noted trends occurring across top retail chains. Home Depot added an additional Black Friday 2014 circular promoting appliances. Home Depot offered deep Black Friday 2014 discounts on microwaves. Staples increased circular pages by +38%, and featured an attractive “Free Kindle eReader with laptop purchase” and a $99 Asus laptop on the Black Friday 2014 circular front. Walgreens had little change in November circular metrics but CVS cut 9 pages; a 10% decline.

If you’re like me, and you were curious about how Black Friday hype translated into retail sales, your head is spinning right about now. Because the flurry of post-Black Friday news reports is packed with conflicting information, data that doesn’t seem to add up, and—perhaps unsurprisingly given those disparities—wildly variant conclusions about whether the Black Friday weekend was a “success” or a “disappointment” and about what is in store for the rest of the holiday season.

The fall is always a busy time for new store openings as retailers head into their biggest selling season of the year. The five below are generating big buzz….as is the bonus one at the end.

1. Starbucks Reserve Roastery & Tasting Toom, Seattle
The coffee giant spared no expense on its newest retail concept—the space is spectacular.  Two years in the making, the Roastery is part retail store and part manufacturing facility—and all theatre.

Months after announcing a major upgrade in its e-commerce capabilities, Belk reported that its online sales grew 46% in the third quarter.

The Charlotte, N.C.-based operator of 300 department stores in 16 states attributed the increase in Internet sales to the company’s “Yes! We Have It” item locator program and store fulfillment of digital sales initiatives.