Omnichannel

San Francisco -- Westfield Corp. and Forest City Enterprises on Thursday unveiled Bespoke, a coworking, event and tech-demo space designed to foster a retail-tech community and support retail innovation at Westfield San Francisco Centre. Bespoke is designed as a space where entrepreneurs, brands and retailers can come together to research, create, collaborate, refine, showcase and debut work within the confines of the shopping center, which features more than 200 retailers and restaurants.

New Albany, Ohio – Abercrombie & Fitch Co. posted a wider-than-expected loss and drop in revenue for its first quarter. But the teen apparel retailer, which is in the middle of a brand update to improve its controversial image, sounded a positive note, noting that its comparable sales continued to improve in May and that it expects sales to continue to improve in the second half.

In what has become a familiar industry tale, the Belk department store chain’s investments in omnichannel drove first quarter sales growth but negatively affected profits.

Seattle – Amazon is upping the ante with physical retailers with its launch of free same-day delivery for orders of more than $35 to members of its Prime program.

The new service, called Prime Free Same-Day Delivery, is available for more than one million items and in 14 U.S. metropolitan areas. Orders must be placed before noon local time to be delivered by 9 p.m., seven days a week.

The seminal digital event that occurred in the year 2007 was the introduction of the first iPhone, but there was another noteworthy development that year involving Walmart e-commerce.

A few months after the iPhone made headlines, Walmart rolled out its buy online, pick up in store service branded as Site to Store and helped give meaning to the word omnichannel. In digital terms, 2007 was eons ago.

We live in interesting times when it comes to all the ways we can pay and complete purchases, times when you can now order food for delivery without ever leaving your search engine. More convenient and secure ways of making payments are advancing on a number of interesting fronts, including computer chip enabled EMV credit and debit cards that are soon to replace magnetic stripe cards in the United States, and mobile phone-based digital wallets like Apple Pay and CurrentC (not to mention the digital currency bitcoin, which admittedly we’re pulling for).

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. -- CBL & Associates Properties announced the opening of the redevelopment at CoolSprings Galleria in Nashville (Franklin), Tenn. Designed to significantly enhance the offerings at the shopping center, the redevelopment of the former Sears location includes adding a mix of new fashion stores and fine dining options as well as a new mall entrance to improve mall circulation.

Amazon is upping the ante in the fulfillment wars by expanding its same-day delivery service for Prime members to more markets and making it free.

The company added two new markets, San Diego and Tampa Bay, to its list of same-day delivery areas while also reducing the price to free for orders over $35. The company already offers same-day delivery in several regions, including New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, Atlanta, Boston, Baltimore, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Washington, D.C.