Direct To Consumer (DTC)

The influx of new retail into New York City, from brands both familiar and ones new to our shores, continued unabated in 2015. Everyone has their favorites. Here are mine:

Flying Tiger

In a new expansion of food and retail, Urban Outfitters Inc. is acquiring a Philadelphia-based restaurant chain. The move comes as many retailers are working to make their stores more experiential by adding various services, including food and beverages, to the mix.

Target Corp. is bringing its smaller-sized, urban format to one of lower Manhattan’s trendiest — and wealthiest — neighborhoods.

The retailer will open an approximately 45,000-sq.-ft. store on Greenwich Street in Tribeca, near Battery Park, a fast-growing and affluent residential area, and the Financial District.

The two-level store is scheduled to open in October 2016. It is located in a 14-story, 625,000-sq.-ft. mixed-use building, whose landlord is Jack Resnick & Sons.

Shoppers all across the country who long for a taste of salsa from San Antonio or tortilla chips from Dallas will love the latest news from Texas-based grocery chain H-E-B.

Image-based e-commerce is becoming more popular on the consumer side, and now Shopify is making the retailer side more visually based.

The new Sello mobile app from e-commerce platform Shopify allows retailers to create a free online store by taking and posting photos of the products they want to sell, and then adding price and a brief description. No coding is involved.
Retailers can also use Sello to promote and sell products via platforms such as social media, email and SMS text. The only charges are fees from payment processors.

What if you could target parents based on their specific stage of parenthood, such as expectant or parents of a newborn? According to The Drum, eBay Advertising is rolling out a new tool that will let retailers using its service do just that. [The Drum]

Grocery e-commerce has thus far mostly been the province of large vertical players like Kroger, mass merchandisers like Target and Wal-Mart, and online platforms like Amazon and Instacart.

However, a successful regional grocer is throwing its Stetson in the grocery e-commerce ring. Texas-based H-E-B, one of the nation's largest regional grocery retailers with more than 370 stores in Texas and Mexico, is making 50,000 food, drugstore and general merchandise products available to purchase and ship at its corporate site.

Visual social media network Instagram is taking a new step toward becoming a platform for commerce.

Instagram has launched a new program called Instagram Partners that is designed to help companies advertise on the social network. Each certified partner must have expertise in at least one of three defined areas: ad tech (buying and selling ads at scale), community management (managing comments and gaining consumer insights), and content marketing (sourcing and delivering content at scale).