Omnichannel

Front-end customer engagement is only as good as its back-end support. Realizing this fact, omnichannel specialty beauty retailer Sigma Beauty is enlisting eBay Enterprise to provide fulfillment and freight services. T

Membership buying club DirectBuy is taking its direct sales model to a new level of directness. The retailer has launched the My DirectBuy mobile app.

The iOS and Android app allows DirectBuy to search for products, browse promotions, and place and track orders on the companion My DirectBuy website.

REI has promoted Rachel Ligtenberg to VP of retail following a 25-year tenure with the company.

In her new role, she adds retail operations to her current responsibilities of leading store design, visual merchandising and the co-op's flagship strategy.

Ligtenberg will continue to enhance REI's retail experience through new store design concepts to showcase its products, services and educational programs.

The maker of bagless and cordless vacuum cleaners and high-tech fans is looking to sell its products in its own branded spaces.

Dyson is planning to open a store on London’s Oxford Street as a prelude to opening locations around the world, The Daily Mail reported. The company has previously opened pop-ups at the Bluewater shopping center in Kent, England, and in select malls in the United States.

When it comes to selling products online, retailers want to go wherever their customers go. According to the 2015 E-Commerce Benchmark Survey from Boston Retail Partners, close to half (45%) of surveyed retailers indicated that mobile websites are their most important e-commerce capability.

Social media plays an important role in the grocery shopping process. According to a new study from market research firm Packaged Facts, “Retail Food Marketing Trends in the U.S.: Technology, Mobile, and Social Media,” a majority of grocery store shoppers use social media to get recipes (59%).

Most consumers would prefer to buy products from nearby stores. Shoe Carnival Inc., an Evansville, Indiana-based specialty footwear retailer with 404 stores, is responding to that preference with a new local marketing initiative.

Shoe Carnival has implemented the SIM Partners Velocity local marketing automation platform, to scale local search marketing in an effort to drive incremental in-store traffic and sales, as well as improve the overall customer experience.

Walmart has returned to its acquisitive ways in Silicon Valley with the purchase of PunchTab, a four-year old company with talent and technology to help the retailer’s Sam’s Club division better personalize offers.

Jeremy King, head of WalmartLabs, and Jamie Iannone, president and CEO of Samsclub.com announced the deal to acquire PunchTab in a joint statement on the @WalmartLabs site. The deal involves the purchase of PunchTab’s and six employees who will join WalmartLabs including founder Mehdi Ait Oufkir.