eCommerce

Chicago -- Shoppers are making retailers wait for the back-to-school rush.

The majority (65%) of shoppers will start back-to-school shopping in the next few weeks, according to JLL’s Back-to-School Survey, which also revealed that 88% of shoppers will shop at a brick-and-mortar store for either school supplies or clothing, placing minimal online orders for merchandise.

The CEO of Overstock.com says the company is poised to take advantage of growth opportunities from "crypto-initiatives" and other means as the retailer posted an increase in revenue in the second quarter.

CEO Patrick Byrne said the company's launch of what it calls a "digital corporate bond", or a cryptocurrency-based security, based on bitcoin will fuel expansion and growth for the company.

New York — Ron Johnson’s newest venture has secured a big round of additional funding.

Enjoy Technology, the online e-commerce start-up founded by the former J.C. Penney chief and Apple store executive, announced it has secured $50 million in a round of Series B funding led by Highland Capital.

Seattle – Online jewelry retailer Blue Nile Inc. had profit and sales results in the second quarter of fiscal 2015 that crested beyond Wall Street expectations. Net income rose 4% to $2.3 million from $2.2 million the same quarter a year earlier.

An increase in interest and other income, as well as cost of sales growth that did not match the growth pace of sales, drove the increase in net income. Net sales rose 7% to $113.69 million from $106.57 million.

San Francisco – Twitter is reportedly planning to expand the pilot of its buy button feature, and not by a small amount. According to Re/code, Twitter is negotiating with e-commerce platforms including Shopify to let potentially hundreds of thousands of retailers and other businesses directly sell goods through links embedded in tweets.  

New York — Sephora is enhancing its omnichannel appeal by taking a page out of Birchbox’s playbook.

The beauty giant will test a beauty subscription service, called Play! By Sephora, in Boston, Cincinnati, and Columbus, Ohio,  in September, reports Women’s Wear Daily, with additional markets to be added in 2016.

Washington, D.C. — Import cargo volume at the nation’s major retail container ports is expected to increase 3.6% in August 2015 from the same month in 2014 as retailers begin to bring in merchandise for the holiday season. According to the monthly Global Port Tracker report released by the National Retail Federation (NRF) and Hackett Associates, imports for the year are expected to be up 4.2% from 2014.

Seattle – Shoppers at select Nordstrom Inc. stores are seeing a new pop-up shop. Specialty eyewear retailer Warby Parker is operating pop-up shops at six Nordstrom locations around the country until Sept. 6, and also offering an e-commerce page on the Nordstrom site.

As part of the Pop-In@Nordstrom series of themed pop-up shops, Warby-Parker will offer Nordstrom customers a curated selection of frames, as well as four exclusive pairs of sunglasses and an assortment of literary-themed specialty items such as colored pencils and watercolor markers.