eCommerce

Five dynamic retail and restaurant brands — Altar’d State, Bentley’s Pet Stuff, MOD Pizza, Sugarfina and Warby Parker — took home the honors as the winners of Chain Store Age’s annual Breakout Retailer Awards.

The awards, selected by CSA’s editorial board and sponsored by Paint Folks, recognize innovative retail and restaurant concepts that are on their way up —brands that have crossed the “newbie” line, and are well positioned for growth, in store, online, or both.

Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) will open a new omnichannel fulfillment center in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, that includes assistance from robots.

The center, opening in July, will run robotic retail technology that HBC says is approximately three-times faster than the typical technology utilized in e-commerce DCs The retailer plans to open the 450,000-sq.-ft. facility through a phased approach, expanding to 617,500 sq. ft. by January 2017.

At a time when more and more online retailers are successfully expanding to brick-and-mortar locations, it’s worth taking a moment to examine how those brands are approaching the site selection process. The specific and strategic considerations that online retailers review when assessing possible brick-and-mortar locations not only tells us a lot about what’s behind that thought process, but provides important hints about the priorities and perspectives shaping retailer behavior in an increasingly omnichannel world.

Photos by Kate Berry

For all their differences, the shopping center owners and brokers from around the world who will gather at the end of May in Las Vegas for retail real estate’s annual RECon confab are alike in that they are all on the lookout for new retail concepts to lure and entice shoppers.

The good news is that there are plenty of newer brands ready to spread their wings. Some have been around for a couple of years, but are flush with new financing. Many are formerly pure players now turning their attention to physical stores.

One of the nation’s largest franchisees will soon also be operating GNC stores.

Moving ahead with its plan to reduce its corporate-owned store footprint, GNC announced plans to sell 84 company-owned locations to Dallas-based Sun Holdings for about $17 million. The retailer revealed the sale amid disappointing first quarter results.

Whatever you may have been doing at age 17, it was likely less impressive than launching a new e-commerce/ social media platform aimed at sneaker aficionados.

But that’s just what New York-based 17-year-old sneaker enthusiast Anthony Debrantt has done, founding a new online and mobile marketplace called Sneakmart. The site has offers hundreds of thousands of new and used sneakers, including major brands.

Expect the 365 by Whole Foods Market store format to look much different than the traditional Whole Foods store.

The concept, debuting in late May in Los Angeles, will feature a no-frills design, low fixtures and all-digital price tags, reported Business Insider, which was given a sneak peak of the format.

To see renderings of 365 and learn more about its details, click here.