Data & Analytics

CommonKindness president and co-founder Sarah Schloemer has been named the winner of a Silver Stevie Award in the Young Entrepreneur of the Year category in the 10th annual Stevie Awards for Women in Business.

The Stevie Awards for Women in Business are the world’s top honors for female entrepreneurs, executives, employees and the organizations they run. All individuals and organizations worldwide are eligible to submit nominations: public and private, for-profit and nonprofit, large and small. The 2013 awards received entries from 18 nations and territories.

Change is constant, as they say, and we’ve all seen a lot of that, especially in the past few years. But as I look 10 years into the future, I think we’re actually in the early days of not just more change, but wholesale revolution, too. “Revolution” is a strong — and possibly overused — term. Why are the next 10 years different? Fundamentally, our customer has changed more in the past three years than in the past 30 and the pace of change is poised to accelerate in the coming decade.

Amazon.com hopes to someday deliver packages to its customers using unmanned drone aircraft.

According to numerous media reports, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said during an interview on the TV news program 60 Minutes aired Dec.1 that the company is currently testing the use of drones to pick up customer orders in buckets from fulfillment centers to enable delivery within 30 minutes of a customer executing an online transaction.

The holiday season has officially kicked off and Clorox is anticipating the messes that will need cleaning. The brand is teaming up with actress Busy Philipps for the third annual Bleach It Away sweepstakes.

Philipps and the Messy Melodies, Clorox's own band of comedic holiday carolers, will hit the streets of New York City to bring holiday “bleachable moments” to life through song.

Regional department store operator Gordmans Stores said its fourth quarter same store sales are likely to decline in the mid-single digits after it reported a 6.1% drop in comps for the third quarter ended November 2.

Despite the comp decline, Gordman’s total sales at its 93 stores increased 5.8% to $151.3 million from $143.1 million due to the addition of 10 new stores in the prior nine months. Net income for the third quarter was $1.1 million, or six cents a share, compared to net income of $4 million, or 21 cents a share, last year.

Retailers were effective at getting a record number of Americans to visit stores and Web sites over the weekend, but persuading them to spend money was a different story, according to data released by the National Retail Federation Sunday afternoon.

December 2013 is projected to be the fifth coldest in more than 22 years and the coldest in three years for the U.S. as a whole. Temperatures will be much colder for the eastern half of the U.S. with below-normal cold expected in the Great Lakes, Ohio Valley and Northeast. The start of the month is expected to be cold and stormy while the week after Christmas looks milder and drier in the East. A stormy pattern during the first three weeks of the month promises to also be snowy with above average snowfall across the Great Lakes, Mid-Atlantic, South Central states and the Northwest.

Even before its final round of deals kicked in at Walmart on Friday morning the retailer announced that sales had exceeded last year’s record-breaking results with 10 million transactions completed between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. on Thanksgiving.

Stamford, Conn. -- Among Americans who purchased a product that required shipping this year, 80% consider shipping options, including free shipping, to be an important factor in their overall shopping experience, according to a recent survey commissioned by Pitney Bowes Inc. The survey found free shipping is by far more important to Americans surveyed over fast shipping (77% versus 19%).  

Westlake Village, Calif. – Consumers show unique online shopping patterns on Cyber Monday. According to figures released by integrated online marketing company ValueClick, while most online shopping activity occurs between 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. local time on a typical weekday, the heaviest volume shifts to 6:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. local time on Cyber Monday, peaking at 8 p.m.