Data & Analytics

London -- Storage Made Easy announced that the global cosmetics retailer Lush has chosen to use its Enterprise File Share and Sync solution with data stored on OpenStack Swift.


Lush ran an initial two month trial with 50 people prior to moving forward with the Storage Made Easy solution. They subsequently rolled out the solution in stages, by department, first to 150 people and then on to 300 people, and then again on to 500 people.

New York - The Deloitte Consumer Spending Index moved down again in September, showing the second month of small declines. The Index tracks consumer cash flow as an indicator of future consumer spending.

New York -- Online mobile sales were strong in the third quarter as mobile percentage of online sales increased more than 60% year-over-year. Led by strong gains in home goods and department store, mobile traffic for U. S. retail overall reached almost 32% in the quarter, up more than 50% while online retail sales overall grew close to 10%.

Dallas – The e-commerce model is still actively evolving in response to changes in the consumer marketplace and technology. David Llamas, former CIO of British department store Harrod’s and an independent executive advisor, described how e-commerce has changed and is still changing during a session at the SAP Retail Forum on Oct. 8.

“In 2007, new e-commerce models like private sales, deals, and mobile commerce emerged,” said Llamas. “They have five times faster growth than traditional e-commerce models.”

New York -- Family Dollar saw strong growth in refrigerated and frozen food, health aids and tobacco, which buoyed sales in consumables to 8.3% for the fourth quarter ended Aug. 31. Despite the increase, comparable store sales for the quarter were flat. 

The company’s total net sales for the quarter increased 5.8% to $2.5 billion compared with total net sales of $2.4 billion in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2012. However, customer traffic and the average customer transaction value were flat during the quarter. 

Shopper activity decreased this September, in line with ShopperTrak’s predictions. Total retail store shopper traffic for the month decreased 20.2% compared to August. In a year-over-year comparison, shopper traffic for September 2013 decreased 6.9% compared to the same month last year.

Back-to-school shopping activity that peaked in August slowed as school came back in session. The early Labor Day (Sept. 2) compounded the reduction in September’s shopper activity by combining two normally distinct shopping opportunities into just one.

Salt Lake City -- Overstock.com has announced the opening of a distribution center in Jonestown, Pa. The new operation will enable faster fulfillment through state-of-the-art warehouse technologies, while providing room for growth. The new center will fill orders to customers from Maine to Florida within two days.

Initially, the Jonestown warehouse will bring 15 jobs to the area with additional jobs as the operation grows over the next few years. The company’s primary warehouse will remain in Salt Lake City.

Amazon has introduced a new service that streamlines how customers transact with online merchants. Login and Pay with Amazon allows customers of participating companies to go from browsing to buying in just a few clicks using their Amazon account information.