eCommerce

St. Louis — Build-A-Bear Workshop narrowed its second-quarter loss to $6.2 million from $7.5 million in the year-ago period, boosted by improved sales and store productivity.

Total revenues were $81.9 million , up 1.9% from the $80.4 million reported in the second quarter of 2012.  Same-store sales rose 7.3%, including an 8.6% increase in North America and 1.7% increase in Europe. E-commerce sales rose 5.2%.

Walmart.com is already a large, fast growing and dynamic organization, but global e-commerce president and CEO Neil Ashe is intent on executing an integrated vision of commerce that no one else has — or can.
 

New York — Nearly 70% (68%) of consumers plan to spend up to $500 this back-to-school shopping season compared with 63% in 2012 and 48% in 2011, according to a new spending forecast from e-commerce platform provider PriceGrabber.  Additionally, 17% of respondents plan to spend between $500 and $1,000, and 15% of shoppers said they have no back-to-school shopping budget this year. Conducted from June 17 to July 8, 2013, the survey includes responses from 2,191 U.S. online shopping consumers.

Chicago — Pure-play e-tailers are doing a better job in satisfying their customers overall than omnichannel retailers, but omnichannel retailers have an edge in select functional areas like checkout. According to results of the mid-year Customer Feedback Index (CFI) from OpinionLab, e-tailers had an average CFI score of 481, compared with a CFI average of 457 for omnichannel retailers.

Seattle — Amazon.com increased net sales an impressive 22% during the second quarter of fiscal 2013. But the Internet retailing giant reported a net loss of $7 million due to operating expenses and investments in warehouses, digital content and other areas, compared with net income of $7 million in the year-ago period.

New York -- The Dump Furniture Store plans to open a 134,000-sq.-ft. outlet in Lombard, Ill. and a 215,000-sq.-ft. warehouse in Addison, Ill. over the summer.

With 11 locations, the big-box retailer offers discounted famous-name furniture in stores open only on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

The top U.S. retailers’ web sites are barely keeping up with customers, according to a report by Radware, a provider of application delivery and application security solutions for virtual and cloud data centers. Now in its fifth edition, the “State of the Union: Ecommerce Page Speed & Web Performance, Summer 2013” study reveals that websites for the top 500 U.S. retailers continue to slow down, a 13.7% drop since spring 2012.

NEW YORK — Nickelodeon has promoted Pamela Kaufman to the expanded role of CMO and president of the company’s consumer products. She will report to Cyma Zarghami, president of Nickelodeon Group.  

In her new role, Kaufman will oversee Nickelodeon's domestic consumer products business, encompassing merchandising and licensing for properties which include SpongeBob SquarePants, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Dora the Explorer.