Data & Analytics

Sak’s and Nordstrom have aggressively expanded their off price formats in recent years and now Neiman Marcus wants a bigger piece of the action.

CHICAGO — MillerCoors is showcasing its environmental friendliness by taking its Golden Brewery landfill free. 

The company, which has taken four of its other breweries landfill-free, has eliminated an average of 135 tons of waste monthly that was previously sent to landfill.

New York - On Tuesday, June 25, Chain Store Age will host a Webinar on how fashion apparel retailer Express uses targeted training to keep its store associates on brand. Adam Zaller, director of learning and development for Express, will discuss how the chain deployed a cloud-based learning management system in its 600plus stores.

London – Omni-channel global fashion brand Burberry is taking a pioneering step into the realm of digital customer engagement with a new program called Burberry Kisses. Partnering with the Google Art, Copy & Code project that presents itself as a “series of experiments to re-imagine advertising,” Burberry is allowing consumers to send online letters which are sealed with digital replicas of their kisses, complete with their choice of Burberry lipstick shade.

By Shelley E. Kohan, [email protected]

Retail’s four walls are the most valuable marketing assets out there today. The brick-and-mortar stores that know how to optimize their physical locations for maximum productivity will be the ones who come out on top this year. Here are the top five trends that will distinguish the leaders from the laggards, and will define retail’s future for years to come:

1. The in-store experience

Austin, Texas – Slightly more than half of consumers (51%) said they would be more likely to buy something in-store if they received a coupon on their mobile device for that store while nearby, according to a recent mobile commerce survey from RetailMeNot and The Omnibus Company. The survey of 1,067 U.S. residents age 18 and older conducted in April 2013 also revealed:

Chesapeake, Va. – Shareholders of Dollar Tree re-elected 11 members of the board of directors at the company’s annual meeting on June 20. Arnold S. Barron, Macon F. Brock, Jr., Mary Anne Citrino, H. Ray Compton, Conrad M. Hall, Lemuel E. Lewis, J. Douglas Perry, Bob Sasser, Thomas A. Saunders III, Thomas E. Whiddon, and Carl P. Zeithaml each received a majority of votes to serve another term on the board of directors.

New York  -- Los Angeles is on the fast track to becoming the largest city in the nation to move toward a ban on “single-use” plastic bags after the City Council passed a resolution barring their use in supermarkets, convenience stores and any big retailer, which would include Target and Walmart, that sells groceries.

New York -- A report released Thursday by Bloomberg said that consumer sentiment climbed during the week ended June 16 to minus 29.4, compared with minus 31.3 a week earlier and representing a lift after a two-month low. In fact, according to the Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index, Americans’ views on the economy were the least pessimistic in five years.

The monthly Bloomberg consumer economic expectations gauge for June held at minus 1, matching May’s reading as the best this year.

CINCINNATI — Aero Fulfillment Services, a national provider of e-commerce fulfillment solutions, is bringing back Jamie Hudgens, this time as product manager for Aero’s new freight management service, SmartShip.

Hudgens was most recently a regional director for the East Coast at Sunburst Analysis, advising clients on cost reduction. He was director of business development for Aero from 2005-2009. In his new role, Hudgens will build out the service to include inbound, outbound, LTL, container, rail and small parcel freight services.