Data & Analytics

Irvine, Calif. -- Billabong International has selected a retail suite from JustEnough’s retail suite of solutions to help transform its planning and replenishment processes across all its brands worldwide.

Denver – Whatever the cool kids (and their families) are doing this summer, back-to-school shopping does not appear to be on the agenda.

An ongoing shopper behavior study conducted by The Integer Group and M/A/R/C Research shows that retailers will continue to see the number of back-to-school shoppers in their stores drop.

In 2014, the data showed 36% of shoppers would not be shopping back-to-school, and this year the study is showing a 7% increase in those not shopping for back-to-school.

San Francisco -- Gensler announced that Jim Crawford has joined its lifestyle team as director of strategy and experience design. Crawford most recently served as chief experience officer at Chute Gerdeman, where he was responsible for integrating technology into award-winning store and experience design projects.

At Gensler, Crawford will utilize skills to enhance the firm’s practice and work with clients in multiple industries connecting digital and physical design with business and consumer objectives.
 

Consumers don’t see “channels.” They are time-starved and information-rich, and use technology that they carry around in their pockets and purses to find the best solutions to their lifestyle needs.

The practice in retail of creating different brand experiences in different channels has gone beyond being an inconvenience to shoppers. It is the central challenge that retailers are grappling with today.

Green Bay, Wis. – Shopko Stores is looking more closely into how it uses store space. It’s also looking more deeply into customer’s market baskets.

The retailer has renewed its license of APT’s Test & Learn and Market Basket Analyzer software for another three years.

Boston -- Online licensed-sports apparel retailer Fanatics has taken website testing and optimization to a whole new level.

Fanatics is using SiteSpect’s Origin Experiments to test more than site aesthetics, such as headlines and font color. The solution empowers Fanatics to execute a broad range of tests on new site features and functionality, such as on-site search and checkout flow.

Boca Raton, Fla. – Office Depot is accelerating its previously announced plan to close at least 400 stores as the retailer awaits its acquisition by Staples.

After shuttering a greater than expected 99 stores in the second quarter, Office Depot boosted its 2015 store closing target to 175 locations, with another 60 due to close in 2016. The closings are on top of 153 closings throughout 2014, including 108 stores in the fourth quarter of last year.

Retail is becoming an increasingly hot market for hosted cloud computing providers. Some of those providers, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the Aliyun cloud division of Alibaba, are operated by retailers.