Data & Analytics

Seattle – Amazon.com is reportedly using robots from Kiva Systems at three distribution centers. According to the Wall Street Journal, the robots bring merchandise from shelves to warehouse workers and can potentially reduce the cost of filling an order by 20% to 40%, for an annual savings of more than $900 million.

Amazon purchased Kiva for $775 million in March 2012 and according to a recent financial disclosure now has 1,400 Kiva robots in service helping fulfill orders. The retailer declined to comment on the project.

New York -- SK Planet Inc. is launching its first major mobile app, Styletag, for finding, sharing and buying the current fashion styles. The dynamic, free fashion app will be released Monday, Dec. 9 for iOS 7 (iPad, iPhone and iPod) and on Google Play for Android.  

Pin, share, Tweet will join sit, stay, come at the AKC/Eukanuba National Championship when Procter & Gamble introduces cutting-edge social capabilities to the top dog show.

The entire event scheduled for December 13-15 in Orlando will be live streamed which gives those who visit Live.Eukanuba.com the opportunity to virtually sit ringside. However, where things get interesting is with the addition of interactive features to the live streaming that will allow viewers to immediately chat, share, Pin, post and Tweet with the click of a button.

New York -- Target is testing a section of its website that features products popular on Pinterest.

The Target Awesome Shop includes products from several lines, including beauty, each of which is among those most-pinned on Pinterest in the last few days. The products are mentioned only if they have at least a four-star guest review.

The website is currently in beta testing and was put together "in a matter of a few weeks" by Target's Rapid Accelerated Development team, a small group of digital experts working for the company.

The retail industry will lose an estimated $8.76 billion to return fraud this year, and $3.39 billion during the holiday season alone, according to the National Retail Federation’s 2013 Return Fraud Survey. Overall, 5.8% of holiday returns are fraudulent, up slightly from 4.6% last year.

Washington, D.C. – The National Retail Federation estimated that the retail industry added 13,500 jobs in November, and 268,500 year-over-year.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation report showed that November total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 203,000, with the unemployment rate at 7%.

Eight months into his role as CEO and with a new merchandising organization in place, David Campisi is following a familiar blueprint to reinvigorate the performance of Big Lots — making hard choices to streamline operations, implementing new merchandising strategies and lowering near-term expectations.

Waldorf, Germany -- Black Friday social mentions more than doubled those of Cyber Monday this year. But a new infographic from SAP shows that consumers felt the most excited and happy about Cyber Monday.