Data & Analytics

East Moriches, N.Y. -- Solutions Management, a leading national retail and corporate maintenance company, announced the appointment of Michael DiTaranto as its new senior operations manager.

Retailers often assume that meeting the needs of the Millennial generation through technology is a highly specialized endeavor due to the unique experience these “digital natives” have had growing up in an IT-centric world. But before making that assumption, retailers should consider these words author Joyce Maynard, then a Yale freshman, wrote in her 1972 New York Times essay “An 18-Year-Old Looks Back on Life:”

Ann Arbor, Mich. – Domino’s Pizza begins a national campaign today promoting its enhanced online ordering profiles platform, allowing customers the ability to save information and reorder their favorite order in as little as five clicks, or about 30 seconds.

Customers who order at dominos.com can create their pizza profile by saving their favorite order, as well as address and payment information, then accessing the new 'Your Easy Order' and 'Your Recent Orders' sections in the future to reorder in as few as five clicks.

Los Altos, Calif. – Catalog Spree has launched a new beauty department in its mobile shopping app with lookbooks for retailers including Sephora, Beauty.com, Avon, Bliss, and The Body Shop. Catalog Spree's full-page lookbooks let consumers browse and shop by flipping through pages on an iPad or iPhone.

The app features more than 350 custom lookbooks, as well as traditional digital catalogs. Catalog Spree says the lookbooks have 50% more page clickthroughs than a traditional digital catalog.

San Francisco -- Piracy and discoverability are the top issues facing app developers today, with 26% of app developers reporting their apps have been pirated. A survey of more than 250 app developers App Developers Conference (ADC) also shows that a similar 26% found that their apps had been hacked, or obtained without proper payment.

New York -- Holiday sales are expected to climb to between $963 and $967 billion, representing a 4% to 4.5% increase in November through January holiday sales (excluding motor vehicles and gasoline) this year from last year’s season, according to the new Deloitte holiday sales forecast. The growth rate is on par with last year's 4.5% gain.

In addition, Deloitte forecasts a 12.5 to 13% increase in non-store sales. Nearly three-quarters of non-store sales result from the online channel with additional sales coming from catalogs and interactive TV.

Imagine you are at in a major department store’s corporate headquarters as your team prepares numbers for the upcoming holiday season. The frenetic pace of retail holiday hiring can frazzle even the most experienced manager, and diligently checking every box in the employee onboarding process can seem laughably optimistic in the rush to find, hire and get as many employees as possible going in a matter of days.

In a move designed to expand its existing consumer base, Gerber has launched its 2013 photo search, leveraging social media to encourage parents or legal guardians of children up to 48 months of age to participate. 

Participants are asked to upload a recent photo of their children on the Gerber Facebook page for a chance to win a grand prize of $50,000 as well as the chance for their child to star in a future advertisement for Gerber. In addition, six Milestone winners will be selected based on Facebook fan votes. Photo entries are being accepted now through Oct. 27.

Solutions Management, a leading national retail and corporate maintenance company, has appointed Michael DiTaranto as the company’s senior operations manager.

SMI partners with retailers and corporations to provide maintenance services which include floor care, window cleaning, high dusting, power washing and janitorial services. Recovery services include emergency services, mold testing and remediation, flood restoration and fire restoration.

Traditionally, retailers relied on advertising and direct response to succeed. To make more money, retailers simply let more people know about their stores and products.