Omnichannel

Hangzhou, China -- Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., which previously said it is in discussions with Apple about working with its Apple Pay digital payment service, is now reportedly also open to working with EBay’s PayPal digital payment service.  

Bentonville, Ark. -- Following the lead of some other retailers, Walmart is spreading out Black Friday beyond the day after Thanksgiving.

 

General Growth Properties has unveiled Adventure to Santa, a DreamWorks DreamPlace first-of-its-kind holiday experience that starts with Shrek, ends with Santa and seamlessly blends storytelling with cutting-edge technology.   

Macy’s third quarter sales were lower than expected but the company still managed to grow profits by 30% and expressed optimism regarding the fourth quarter.

The department store retailer said same store sales declined 0.7% while total sales    declined 1.3% to slightly less than $6.2 billion during the third quarter ended Nov. 1. Net income increased 22.5% to $217 million while earnings per share, aided by the repurchase of nine million shares, increased 30% to 61 cents a share.

Morrisville, N.C. --  Amazon.com’s same-store increase rate dropped from September to October 2013, but still more than doubled the same-store sales growth rate of overall e-commerce. According to data from cloud-based e-commerce solutions provider ChannelAdvisor, Amazon's October same-store sales came in at 32.4%, a decrease compared to August's 37.9%.  

Manhattan Beach, Calif. -- Skechers is celebrating the opening of its 1,000th retail store. The company, which operates in more than 75 countries, hit the milestone mark with the opening of a new store in Mexico City on Wednesday, preceded by an additional store opening in Mexico earlier this week and two in California last week.  

By Ahsin Rasheed      

IBM and JDA Software Group have developed an integrated omnichannel supply chain solution to help retailers address what today is arguably the greatest operational challenge facing most retailers.