eCommerce

Express brand ambassador Kate Upton will debut her first advertising campaign for the retailer. The launch of the fall 2014 denim campaign with Upton makes her the first celebrity spokesperson to be featured in the brand's advertising in more than a decade.

Upton will celebrate the launch with an exclusive RSVP-only "A Date with Denim and Kate Upton" event at the recently opened Express Times Square store in New York Tuesday, July 8.

Campbell, Calif. – Social shopping site DealsPlus.com has overhauled its site. Starting July 1, DealsPlus users will be able to create, curate and share their own "collections" of products.

Collections make it easy for users to find ideas from like-minded members of the community. For example, users looking for summer home decor inspiration can now "admire" the Summer Home collection and find targeted online deals. As part of the new release DealsPlus will begin working with celebrity and expert collection curators.

New York -- Online beauty subscription brand Julep has tapped former Blue Nile executive Dwight Gaston as chief delivery officer. In the role, he will oversee Julep's operations, customer service, fulfillment and product development teams to ensure efficient delivery of products to its customers.

Julep said it develops more than 300 new products each year for its Maven subscribers and e-commerce customers, and shipments are growing exponentially.

No longer content as a social platform for sharing promotional offers, DealPlus.com has relaunched its site to include new capabilities for users to feature curated assortments of merchandise.

Betamax. Zune. Google Plus. These are just a few consumer technology applications that hit the market with a lot of hype and all failed to catch on for the same basic reason. It seems clear that the Barnes & Noble Nook e-reader tablet can now be considered part of this list, although Barnes & Noble has not yet accepted it.

Online retailer Gilt has added Adrianne Shapira to the company's board of directors.

Shapira has served as the CFO of David Yurman, a fine jewelry luxury brand, since 2012. She is a member of the executive committee that looks to build upon David Yurman's successes by capitalizing on future channel, category and geographic growth.  

Boston – Specialty men’s apparel retailer Blank Label opens its second store in the Downtown Crossing neighborhood of Boston on June 30. According to CNBC, Blank Label, which opened as an online-only retailer in 2009 and opened its first store in Boston in 2013, plans to open six more new physical stores on the East Coast by 2016.

By Gary Ambrosino, CEO of TimeTrade Systems

Too often in retail, disruptions are viewed as bad things, but new digital disruptions, including 3-D printing and digital currencies, are transforming what consumers expect from their shopping experience and how they interact with physical and online retailers — for the better.