L'Oreal

New York – Retailers Amazon.com, HSN, Newegg, QVC and Zappos.com were among the 15 companies receiving the highest ratings in the 2015 Forrester Research Customer Experience Index. Forrester data indicates that improving the customer experience is a strategic priority for 73% of businesses, yet only 1% of companies deliver an excellent customer experience.

Merchandising and marketing concepts such as shoppable videos, digitized stores and social campaigns on Instagram and Twitter were alien ideas to retailers just a few years ago. Not anymore, according to Tom Ebling, CEO of cloud-based e-commerce solutions provider Demandware, who has a unique perspective on what it means to be a “connected brand.”

Walmart is looking to increase its support of community food programs with a new "Fight Hunger. Spark Change." campaign this spring.

The national initiative will invite the public to take action in the fight against hunger. Working with some of the nation’s leading food companies –- Campbell’s, ConAgra Foods, General Mills, Kellogg Company, Kraft, and Unilever–- Walmart is offering the 140 million customers that shop at its stores each week three easy ways to help families in need in their local communities.

New York -- RKF has arranged a 1,560-sq.-ft. lease with international high-end fashion retailer IRO at 241 Columbus Avenue on the Upper West Side in New York City. This will be the second Manhattan store for the French apparel brand, known for its mixing of luxury fabrics with casual street style.

The transaction was arranged by RKF’s executive VP Joshua Strauss and associate Taryn Talmadge, who represented IRO, while the building ownership was represented by RKF executive VP Ariel Schuster and managing director Brandon Eisenman.

New York – The top holiday purchase items this year range from the less personal to the very personal. According to a recent online survey conducted by Harris Poll on behalf of Macy’s among nearly 1,700 U.S. adults 18 and older who are holiday shoppers, gift cards (61%) and clothing (52%) top the list when it comes to the types of gifts that holiday shoppers plan to buy this season.    Other popular holiday items include:  

Chief Information Security Officers (CISO) have become more common on companies’ senior leadership teams. They might be in even higher demand after the highly publicized data breaches at Target, Home Depot, Neiman Marcus and other companies in the past couple of years (see a timeline of data breaches in the past decade here). In fact, Neiman Marcus just hired its first CISO, Sarah Hendrickson.

At a time when food pantries have a critical shortage of supplies and increased demand from those in need, Walmart is making a major pledge to help the hungry.

L'Oréal USA has announced plans to acquire multi-cultural beauty brand Carol's Daughter.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Created by Lisa Price in 1993, Carol's Daughter offers a range of products that are available at specialty beauty stores, mass retailers, on HSN, through e-commerce and at Carol's Daughter branded stores in New York City. For the 12 months ended Sept. 30, Carol's Daughter had net sales of $27 million.