eCommerce

UPS is trying to capitalize on this year’s shorter holiday shopping season, which is six days fewer than last year’s, by touting the shipping services its UPS Store offers.

The UPS Store has a network of 4,300 employees at locally owned and operated centers ready to pack and ship everything from fragile glass ornaments to surfboards and golf clubs. The store also offers customers a Pack and Ship Guarantee.

Consumers who prefer packing their own gifts themselves can obviously still ship them via the UPS Store, but are asked to do the following:

Online sales on Cyber Monday increased by 16% to $2.29 billion compared to last year, according to Adobe’s Digital Index 2013, and a record 18.3% of those sales came from mobile devices — a surge of 80% compared to last year.

Consumer shopping preferences continued to shift online with Cyber Monday being the fifth day in a row of record-breaking online sales. While “brick and click” retailers dominated Thanksgiving weekend sales, Internet retailers generated the most sales on Cyber Monday with a 42% share.

Ascena Retail Group, parent company of Lane Bryant, Dressbarn and Justice, may have just reported same store sales growth across all its formats and achieved Thanksgiving weekend sales objectives, but president and CEO David Jaffe remains cautious in his outlook for the remainder of the holiday season.

As so many other retailers have noted in recent weeks, Jaffe said this year’s highly competitive, promotional and compressed holiday season makes it difficult to know how the next few weeks will play out, despite the company’s recent performance.

New York -- Online giant Amazon has opened a pop-up store in Westfield San Francisco Centre, San Francisco. The pop-up sells Kindle tablets and e-readers, as well as branded covers and power adapters from vending machines, according to The Wall Street Journal. It is one of a handful of pop-ups the company has opened in malls.

Citing one of the employees at the location, WSJ reported that the pop-up store would close after two weeks.

New York -- Hispanic adults are more frequently visiting retailer websites than the average online population, according to Experian Marketing Services.

During a 24-week period, from June 2013 through November 2013, Hispanics' market share of visits to Experian Marketing Services' Hitwise Retail 500 Websites was 21% higher on average than the online population. Further, the analysis found that this market share widened in October 2013 and continued to increase through November.

Trademark has invested in two distressed properties, with plans to transform both into top performers

The slow recovery is leading many developers to examine growth alternatives to new development. Consider, for example, Fort Worth, Texas-based Trademark Property Co.’s idea: invest in distressed properties with excellent real estate and redevelop into new and ambitious concepts. Examples include The Shops at Napa Center in Napa, Calif., and Victory Park in Dallas.

Location: Downtown Erie, Pa.

Size: 196,728 sq. ft.

Developer: Existing property acquired in August 2013 by Phillips Edison-ARC Shopping Center REIT Inc.

Major tenants: Giant Eagle, Panera Bread, The UPS Store, GNC, Wells Fargo, Eat’n Park

Location: Thornwood, N.Y., in Westchester County    

Size: 20,175 sq. ft. 

Developer: DLC Management Corp.    

Major tenants: Walgreens    

Status: Complete    

Location: Moorestown, N.J.

Size: 1,001,000 sq. ft.

Developer: PREIT

Major tenants: Lord & Taylor, Marc Vetri’s Osteria, Jose Garces’ Distrito, Firebirds Wood Fired Grill, Regal Premium Experience Theater, Rizzieri Salon & Spa, Francesca’s Collection (in lease negotiations) and a number of best-of-breed regional retailers

Status: Redevelopment to be completed in 2014 

Location: Cincinnati

Size: 1.1 million sq. ft.

Developer: Co-developed by Steiner + Associates and Bucksbaum Retail Properties
Major tenants: Dillard’s Department Store, CineBistro, a 135-room hotel, 220 luxury residential units and 100,000 sq. ft. of office space.

Status: Construction is scheduled to begin in early 2014 with the opening scheduled for summer 2015.