Data & Analytics

Retailers are really taking notice of how valuable pop-up shops are as a marketing tool, including PetSmart, which has partnered with the City of Detroit and the nonprofit community organization Detroit Dog Park to set up a portable, pop-up dog park in a vacant lot in Detroit.

Marc Jacobs Beauty has launched an e-commerce website featuring more than 150 products in the Marc Jacobs Beauty collection, as well as exclusive access to limited-edition product offerings.

The site was developed with responsive design, and showcases a modern, center navigation, high-definition product shots with zoom capability, and true-to-life product swatches.

Endicia, a provider of e-commerce shipping technology has added an Amazon integration to its shipping software's capabilities. The solution, which allows users to import orders and post-back tracking information, is designed to increase shipping efficiency.

Sellers can now connect their Amazon store to Endicia's software, allowing them to seamlessly import order information and automatically post-back tracking data. This eliminates the need to copy and paste. Endicia also provides label customization options that are not available through Amazon.

Shoppers in Central and South America can now shop eBay in Spanish and Portuguese using their local currencies.

The global commerce platform and a mobile commerce leader launched Spanish- and Portuguese-language sites to better serve customers across Latin America.

More than 2 million people in Latin America already shop eBay in English and U.S. dollars. Now, when these customers visit eBay, they will see localized shopping experiences in Spanish or Portuguese — online and on eBay mobile.

Things took a wacky turn in the retail world this week as JCPenney reported a 6.2% same store sales increase and a huge gross margin expansion while Macy’s, Kohl’s and Walmart stumbled.

Chicago -- General economic conditions, federal, state and/or local regulations, and retail competition/consolidation ranked as the top three risk factors cited by retailers, according to a survey by BDO USA. Rounding out the top five: U.S. and foreign supplier/vendor concerns and labor (health coverage, union concerns, staffing) concerns.            
 

Ottawa, Canada - Amazon.com was the predominant low-price leader in several product categories from January through early April 2014. 360pi compared the pricing strategies of the industry’s top retailers, such as Amazon, Walmart, Home Depot, Costco and others, all based off of Amazon’s own product assortment relative to other retailers in power drills, televisions and outdoor gear.

Jackson, Texas - Convenience store operator Buc-ee’s is using a complete software, hardware and services solution from NCR. The NCR solution is helping to streamline operations as well as increase speed and reliability at the point-of-sale.
 

Austin, Texas - Compare Metrics, a provider of adaptive commerce navigation and discovery tools, has secured $3.8 million in follow-on financing. The financing is led by Austin Ventures with additional funding by existing investors Julie Allegro of Allegro Venture Partners, Bob Greene of Contour Ventures, Capital Factory, Mike Maples Jr. of Floodgate, Brett Hurt of Hurt Family Investments and independent investors Ralph Mack and Adam Ross.

By Kathy Gersch, executive VP, Kotter International