Retail

New Orleans -- Stirling Properties has completed the development financing and will soon launch construction on the Offices at Mid-City Market, a 54,000-sq.-ft., mixed-use complex in the Mid-City neighborhood of New Orleans.

The Offices at Mid-City Market will feature approximately 31,000 sq. ft. of office space along with 9,000 sq. ft. of retail and restaurant space. The building design will include parking, additional green space and water management. Prior to closing the construction loan, the building was nearly 50% pre-leased.

Best Buy has announced that it is shutting down its Future Shop stores in Canada, consolidating under the Best Buy name and spending $200 million on its e-commerce capabilities.

Best Buy says it will convert 65 of the Future Shop locations into Best Buy stores within a week, and 66 others are closing immediately. Best Buy acquired Canada's Future Shop chain in 2001 for C$581 million.

Last week, Oracle hosted its second annual Oracle Industry Connect conference in Washington, D.C. This seat of world power was an appropriate setting for a two-day summit explaining how retailers can use technology to obtain better control of every aspect of their enterprises.

Here are three key lessons attendees gleaned from Oracle Industry Connect:

Customers are the Best Salespeople

Christopher & Banks Corp. has named a former Macy's executive to its board of directors.

Cambridge, Mass. – Mobile traffic during the 2014 holiday season peaked on Thanksgiving (50% of online traffic) and hit a low point on Cyber Monday (30% of online traffic). According to the 2014 Online Holiday Shopping Trends and Traffic report from e-commerce solutions provider Akamai Technologies, Cyber Monday still proved to be the most popular shopping day of the season, with overall retail traffic peaking at almost 13 million page views per minute (V/PM).

By Dan Goldman, Kurt Salmon

Just like bell-bottoms and leg warmers, mom-and-pop retailers are back. Not long ago, it seemed like they would be permanently relegated to some dusty attic space, a relic fighting for relevancy.

Big-box stores put them there. Between 1992 and 2014, the share of U.S. retail stores owned by companies with fewer than 500 employees fell 13%.i That’s because big boxes promised lower prices and a wider assortment, points brought home by large mass market advertising campaigns.

Bolingbrook, Ill. - For fast-growing retailer Ulta Beauty, having an omnichannel presence does not just mean selling products across multiple touch-points. As Ulta Beauty executives explained during a presentation at the recent Oracle Industry Connect 2015 conference, the retailer uses an Oracle Retail technology platform to support a range of omnichannel experiences that engage customers at a highly personal level.

Now that Amazon.com sells virtually any physical good one can think of, the retailer wants to be there when a customer needs to install or repair it.