eCommerce

By Gary Ambrosino, President and CEO of TimeTrade   Hidden in the onslaught of negative headlines about former retail heavyweights, like JC Penney and Sears, is a slew of less-publicized, good news from smaller—many formerly online-only—retailers that are not only weathering the storm but are thriving.   

Burlington, Mass. -- Demandware Inc., a provider of enterprise cloud commerce solutions, has acquired CQuotient, a cloud personalization provider. The acquisition of CQuotient will accelerate Demandware’s plans to turn the data created across its community of retail brands into actionable insights for business optimization and differentiated consumer shopping experiences.   

Leading cosmetics retailer Ulta Beauty named veteran financial industry executive Michelle Collins to its board.

Foothill Ranch, Calif. -- The Wet Seal announced a workforce reduction resulting in the elimination of a combination of 78 filled and open positions, including  66 positions at the company’s corporate office, or a 24% reduction in headcount, and 12 positions at the field management level, representing a 20% decrease. The cuts are the first steps in the retailer’s initiative to reduce its overall cost structure.   

Issaquah, Wash. -- Costco Wholesale Corp. will enter China for the first time through the opening of an online flagship store on Alibaba Group’s Tmall Global platform. Tmall Global allows overseas brands and retailers to establish presence on the Alibaba third-party e-commerce platform Tmall.com without the need for physical operations in China.  

Costco has extended its product offering to shoppers in mainland China by establishing a storefront on the Tmall e-commerce platform operated by Alibaba Group.

San Francisco -- Gap Inc. plans to hire more than 63,000 seasonal associates—more than Walmart—at its stores, call centers and distribution centers nationwide for the 2014 holiday season. (Walmart previously announced it was hiring 60,000 seasonal associates.)  

Walmart’s newest omnichannel initiative is on display at a supercenter in Northwest Arkanas where the retailer has installed lockers for online order pickup.