Data & Analytics

Another digital retailer has made the leap to the physical space. Online beauty subscription company Birchbox, famous for the pink boxes packed with sample products that it sends to subscribers each month, has opened its first brick-and-mortar store, in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood.

The duplex-styled, 4,500-sq.-ft. space is bright and airy, with light woods and a white palette accented with pops of color.

San Francisco – Icix, a provider of supply chain risk management technology, is expanding its Audit Manager suite. Audit Manager applications help companies automate and streamline their audit programs to provide more insight and verification of trading partners’ practices and facilities.

The Icix Audit Manager Suite now includes:

Chile is the top destination for emerging market retail expansion, followed by China, where retail sales totaled a whopping $3.7 trillion in 2013, according to the 2014 A.T. Kearney Global Retail Development Index.

With Uruguay, Brazil, Peru, Panama, Colombia, Costa Rica and Mexico also in the index of top emerging economies ready for retail expansion, Latin America continues to show strength as a regional retail growth market.

Los Angeles – Authentic Brands Group LLC (ABG), owner of the Juicy Couture brand, is launching a new multiyear partnership to expand the scope of e-commerce services for Juicy Couture, with Onestop Internet, a full-spectrum e-commerce solution provider.

Everyone knows that stores need extra staff during the holiday shopping rush, but there is a big difference between carefully scheduling employees when and where they are needed and simply adding bodies to a store’s headcount. San Francisco-based beauty retailer Sephora has come up with a solution: The company is expanding its use of the Ceridian Dayforce workforce management platform to adjust holiday staffing according to both historical sales data and current trends.

“We forecast the entire quarter’s sales and payroll,” explained Gino Filice, IT manager of Sephora.

New York – Profit and revenue for Tiffany & Co. exceeded Wall Street predictions during the second quarter of fiscal 2014. Net earnings rose 16% to $124 million from $107 million in the second quarter of the previous fiscal year, which the retailer attributed to worldwide net sales growth and gross margin improvements.

Worldwide net sales increased 7% to $992.9 million, from $925.9 million. Strong performance in the colored diamond and statement jewelry categories helped drive sales.

With some 3,200 franchised, independently owned and corporate stores, the fast-growing Danish jewelry retailer Pandora needs to ensure customer relationship management (CRM) consistency throughout its operation — especially during the heavily promotional holiday season. It does so by using the Microsoft Dynamics CRM system and a retail portal based on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform.

Franklin, Tenn. -- The retail and hospitality market is entering a time of unprecedented IT growth for 2015, with overall spending expected to increase 5% over 2014  and surpass $190 billion worldwide, according to a new report by IHL, a global research and advisory firm specializing in technologies for the retail and hospitality industries.