Data & Analytics

Best Buy is inspiring young people across the country to consider technology careers with summer camp sessions called the Geek Squad Academy.

This grassroots tech experience inspires underserved teens to consider technology careers and help address the nation’s widely anticipated professional labor shortage.

San Francisco -- Volta Industries is launching a network of more than 100 free electric car charging stations across five cities. Participating retailers include Macy’s and Whole Foods.

Volta first began in Honolulu by offering free electric car charging services underwritten by local brands. Since then, Volta has deployed initial charging infrastructure in high-volume, retail locations in five major cities, including the San Francisco Bay area, the Los Angeles metropolitan area, San Diego, Phoenix, and Honolulu.

Boutique retailer Francesca's efforts to improve same store sales achieved disappointing results in the first quarter.

The company said same-store sales declined 2% due to lower transaction count, although direct-to-consumer sales rose 19%.

San Mateo, Calif. – Cloud-based software provider NetSuite Inc. has completed the acquisition of Bronto Software Inc., a cloud-based commerce marketing company. The acquisition brings together cloud-based omnichannel commerce and marketing automation solutions.

Bronto Software provides the commerce marketing automation platform used by more than 1,400 brands, including Armani Exchange, Timex and Trek Bikes.
 

Vancouver – Lululemon Athletica Inc. struck a pose of profitability in the first quarter of fiscal 2015. Net income more than doubled to $47.8 million from $19 million a year earlier, aided by the elimination of a tax expense.

Net revenue increased 10% to $423.5 million, from $384.6 million. A 27% hike in direct-to-consumer net revenue, which now represents 20% of total company revenue, helped drive the overall improvement. Same-store sales dropped 1%.

New York -- Bloomingdale’s chairman and CEO Tony Spring talked about one of the company’s top-selling products (frozen yogurt!) and much more on Tuesday at the Retail Marketing Society’s “Reinventing the Store” conference in New York.

Here are 10 take-away quotes from his presentation:

“Our Forty Carrots frozen yogurt is one of our best-selling items. We have customers who come into our store five times a week for it.”

Chicago -- Retail was the most compromised industry in 2014, making up 43% of breach investigations, according to a study by Trustwave that gathered data from 574 breach investigations the company conducted in 2014 across 15 countries. Retail made up 43% of the investigations, followed by food and beverage, which made up 13% of the investigations.

The “2015 Trustwave Global Security Report” found that 64% of the breaches in the retail industry were of e-commerce assets and 27% were of POS assets.

Technology is supposed to make our lives simpler – both as consumers and as professionals. It is technology which is bridging the gap between the store and online, between supply and demand, between consumer expectations and retailer capabilities. However, delivering simple solutions is not always easy in today’s complex and rapidly changing business world.