Retail

Amazon.com hopes to someday deliver packages to its customers using unmanned drone aircraft.

According to numerous media reports, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said during an interview on the TV news program 60 Minutes aired Dec.1 that the company is currently testing the use of drones to pick up customer orders in buckets from fulfillment centers to enable delivery within 30 minutes of a customer executing an online transaction.

CommonKindness president and co-founder Sarah Schloemer has been named the winner of a Silver Stevie Award in the Young Entrepreneur of the Year category in the 10th annual Stevie Awards for Women in Business.

The Stevie Awards for Women in Business are the world’s top honors for female entrepreneurs, executives, employees and the organizations they run. All individuals and organizations worldwide are eligible to submit nominations: public and private, for-profit and nonprofit, large and small. The 2013 awards received entries from 18 nations and territories.

I visited my first Von Maur store in 1999, a decade after I relocated from southern boomtown Atlanta to Lincoln, Neb., a sleepy college town that only really wakes up on Husker football Saturdays. Today I am back home in Baton Rouge, La., still no bustling metropolis, but the food and football trump.

Here are several pure-play online retailers that are venturing into the physical space — or thinking about making the leap:

• Rent the Runway, which rents high-end designer gowns, dresses and accessories to women for weddings and other special events, will use a recent infusion of $24.4 million in financing to build showrooms where shoppers can try on the frocks and consult with stylists. The popular online destination reportedly has Chicago next on its agenda.

Liberty Center is a 64-acre, 1.1 million-sq.-ft. mixed-use development located in the North Cincinnati market. It will be comprised of 600,000 sq. ft. of retail, including at least one 200,000-sq.-ft. department store and 370,000 sq. ft. of specialty retail and restaurants. Liberty Center will also include 100,000 sq. ft. of Class A Office, a 135-key hotel and 220 luxury residential multi-family units. A 60,000-sq.-ft., 14-screen second-level upscale theater with integrated dining is also planned.

One hundred and forty one billion dollars. That's the estimated brand value of Walmart, according to Interbrand's "Best Global Brands" report. The annual study ranks the 50 most valuable U.S. retail brands, along with the top store brands in countries around the world.

Editor's Note: Chain Store Age's 24th annual survey of Fastest-Growing Managers measures new domestic and international third-party management and leasing contracts obtained during the preceding calendar year (2012).

Last year's numbers were such that we couldn't limit our annual Fastest-Growing third-party managers listing to a top five; a sixth was added because the contract totals were that close.

The use of mobile devices by sales assistants and other associates presents retailers with new opportunities — and new challenges. Of the latter, one of the most critical has do with managing and maintaining the devices. According to one expert, the help desk can't be expected to do it all.

"Every device needs to be configured and supported and managed in some way," said Alan Dabbiere, chairman of AirWatch, a provider of mobile security and enterprise mobile management, in a presentation at the National Retail Federation Conference & Expo.