Microsoft

The retail tenant roster is filling out at the retail portion of Brickell City Centre, the billion-dollar residential and mixed-use project near completion in Miami. Signing on this week were Bath & Body Works, Pinko, Stitched, Suit Supply, and Victoria’s Secret.  

The first-ever LinkedIn “Top Attractors” list of the most desirable companies to work is out, and several firms engaged in retail were included.  

The blockbuster $26.2 billion purchase of LinkedIn by Microsoft may benefit retailers trying to effectively recruit and manage employees who typically do not stick around for long.   The acquisition is being touted as Microsoft’s entry into social networking, an area where the tech titan has not been that active besides holding a stake in Facebook. However, LinkedIn is primarily a professional services platform and will probably not become a major consumer touchpoint anytime soon.  

The e-commerce landscape just shifted with the announcement Salesforce will purchase Demandware for $2.8 billion.
 
Demandware’s recently enhanced flagship Commerce Cloud platform is one of the leading e-commerce solutions on the market. Notable retail Demandware users include Lands’ End, Marks & Spencer, Urban Decay, and True Religion. According to figures released by IHL in December 2015, Demandware is the number two retail SaaS company by installed revenue, trailing only Microsoft.
 

ModCloth, a San Francisco-based e-commerce retailer focused on vintage and independent apparel styles, has named Nicholas Genest as CTO.
 
Genest joins ModCloth with more than 15 years' experience across consumer, tech and online retail industries. He most recently served as the CTO for the online luxury consignment retailer The RealReal, where he strategically led the development of their mobile, web and data technologies since 2013.

One of my favorite times of the year is teaching at the ICSC University of Shopping Centers. I co-teach “Marketing & Social Media: Shopping Centers in the Digital Age” with Tim O’Connell, assistant VP, director of digital marketing and communications, at RPAI. While we present stats, trends and case studies, what energizes me most are the collaborative class discussions on how other shopping centers owners are progressing with their social media efforts.

As more members of the millennial generation reach the age where they start settling down and buying homes, Lowe’s wants to be sure it reaches them in a format they find relevant.

Amazon.com has found another way to demonstrate its commanding lead in e-commerce – monthly unique visitors.

According to the comScore March 2016 rankings of the top 50 multi-platform (desktop and mobile) properties by unique U.S. work and home visits, Amazon sites received 180.97 million unique visitors. This ranked first among all predominantly retail web properties and fifth overall.