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Amazon currently accounts for one in three shopping transactions in North America, but few details about the e-tail giant’s product assortment have not been readily available. Until now.    

Blue Nile jumped into the physical space last summer with a store at Roosevelt Field mall in Garden City, New York, but it’s not stopping there.   The online jeweler has opened two additional locations, at Tysons Corner Center mall in Fairfax County, Virginia, and at The Westchester mall in White Plains, New York. Blue Nile will open a fourth store later this summer, at the Washington Square mall in Portland, Oregon.  

A retailer that specializes in reproductions of classic lighting products and house parts is quietly expanding under the ownership of Williams-Sonoma.   

Amazon.com has been announcing a lot of new distribution centers lately, and now is opening a new IT office dedicated to logistics, as well as a new physical pick-up location.

The e-tail giant is planning a new technology development center in downtown Minneapolis that will create 100 full-time, technology-focused jobs. Amazon currently has hundreds of employees in Minnesota and is also in the process of hiring an additional 1,000 full-time employees for its new Shakopee, Minnesota, fulfillment center.

Francesca’s Holdings Corp. saw net income decline, but still beat Wall Street predictions, in the first quarter of fiscal 2016.
 
The specialty apparel retailer reported net income of $7/08 million, down 2% from $7.24 million the same quarter a year earlier. Higher selling, general and administrative (S,G&A) expenses offset improvements in gross profit.
 

Specialty apparel retailer Christopher & Banks Corp. is not out of the red, but headed in the right direction during the first quarter of fiscal 2016.
 
The company reported net loss of $0.2 million, down from a net loss of $1.4 million the same quarter the previous fiscal year. Improved gross margin helped shrink the loss. Net sales totaled $100 million, an increase of 9%, compared to $91.6 million.

Shoe shoppers know how individual fit can be, and footwear chain DSW Inc. is trying to be as accommodating as possible.
 
DSW is partnering with 3D footwear printing specialist Feetz to create custom fit, sustainably made shoes. Feetz uses a combination of 3D printer technology and human craftspeople to make new pairs of shoes in hours and designed software to custom fit shoe designs to consumers’ feet.
 

It seems safe to say the novelty of shopping online has worn off.

According to a new study examining the online shopping and purchase habits of the U.S. population from e-commerce platform BigCommerce, 96% of Americans are shopping online. E-commerce customers spend an average of five hours per week making online purchases and allocate an average of 36% of their shopping budgets to e-commerce.

Respondents ranked online shopping ahead of smartphone GPS and streaming media as a basic essential they could not live without.