eCommerce

American Apparel’s preliminary results for its third quarter are not looking very good.

Retailers are feeling confident about their overall financial situations, but less so about omnichannel investment.

This is a main finding from the 7th annual CIT Group Retail Outlook study conducted among 250 senior middle-market retail executives by Harris Poll. Although respondents are generally projecting growing sales and revenue, many feel significant investment toward innovation in an omnichannel strategy -- including website, mobile and social media channels -- will be needed to remain competitive.

The Amazon Echo smart home device represents a potential threat to Amazon’s competitors, but sales are sales.

Amazon Echo will be available in more than 3,000 stores around the country in time for the holiday shopping season. Select locations of ABT, BJ’s Wholesale Club, The Home Depot, Staples, Sears, Brookstone, RadioShack, Fred Meyer, Fry’s, Hhgregg, P.C. Richard & Son, and R.C. Wiley will offer Echo.

American Apparel’s preliminary results for its third quarter are not looking very good.

The beleaguered retailer said it could not meet the deadline to file a quarterly report for the three months ended Sept. 30, noting that efforts related to its Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in October have taken up a good deal of its time.

But American Apparel released estimates in which net sales for the quarter were down 19.1% to $126 million.

Amazon has scored another coup: Its CEO and founder, Jeff Bezos, now ranks as the fourth-richest man in the world, according to Bloomberg. The report puts his fortune at $58.2 billion. [Bloomberg]

Of all the celebrants of China’s annual “Singles Day” Nov. 11 holiday, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. was probably the happiest.

By midnight Nov. 11 China time (which is ahead of all U.S. time zones), Alibaba estimated it had settled about $14.34 billion in gross merchandise volume (GMV) through its Alipay payment platform on its China and international retail marketplaces.

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).

Purchasing all the ingredients needed for a Thanksgiving meal just got easier for San Francisco residents.

Target and Instacart are partnering to provide a food truck featuring Thanksgiving recipes and coupon codes, as well as grocery delivery, in downtown San Francisco.