eCommerce

At a time when the future of the company is unclear, Belk Inc. is reportedly building another flagship store.

Rouse Properties Inc. announced it has signed a lease with Belk Inc. to open a new 237,000 square foot flagship store at The Shoppes at Bel Air in Mobile, Ala. Belk will be taking the place of an existing Sears, and expanding on its already integral presence at The Shoppes at Bel Air.

Sam’s Club, Costco, Rite Aid, and other retailers have shut down their photo services to deal with a potential data breach.

According to Reuters, CVS, which also uses the same photo hosting service as the retailers named above, temporarily shut down its photo sites last week after noticing possible credit card data irregularities.

According to Reuters, some of the companies temporarily shut down the services after photo hosting service PNI told them about the breach, while others proactively shut down after reading reports.

Wolverine Worldwide reported profit declines for the second quarter as the retailer shaved the number of stores it plans to close to 120.

While paid search and email marketing still top retailers’ lists of effective customer acquisition channels, social media has moved up the ranks to become an important tool for engaging with and attracting new customers.

Boasting a proprietary dynamic pricing algorithm, the new online shopping club Jet.com officially launched on July 21 with plans to reach a lofty sales milestone faster than other retailer.

San Jose, Calif. – eBay Inc. is not wasting any time in moving on now that its long-anticipated split with PayPal Inc. is official. According to MarketWatch, eBay has acquired online consignment apparel retailer Twice, and will not maintain the Twice brand.

Hoboken, N.J. – The countdown is on for the latest competitor to Amazon.com to take off. Jet.com, which hopes to compete with the Amazon Prime membership service using “profit-free” pricing, has an online clock on its homepage counting down to launch at 6 a.m. ET on Tuesday, July 21.

Now that the dust is clearing from the Amazon Prime Day sales “holiday,” we can take a look back at this unique retail event, which livened up the typical lull of mid-summer. Let’s review three initial lessons the retail industry can learn from what some observers called the “summer Black Friday.”

Every Day can be a Holiday

San Francisco - Instacart  is expanding a program that lets some contract workers become part-time employees. The online grocery delivery service is now offering its contractor in-store shoppers in Houston and Austin, Texas, the option of applying for new employee roles with expanded responsibilities.

Beijing – Pop star Taylor Swift has selected a Chinese e-commerce partner – and it isn’t Alibaba. Chinese e-commerce platform JD.com will be the first authorized seller of Taylor Swift merchandise in China.

The new JD.com store will be the official online source of Taylor Swift items, including a new fashion line the music superstar designed specifically for the Chinese market.