Omnichannel

Toys “R” Us is resorting a familiar tactic and keeping its doors open from 6 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 21 through 9 p.m. Christmas Eve to drive last-minute holiday shoppers into its stores.

All Toys “R” Us stores nationwide are advertising around-the-clock savings and deals during the final 87 hours of Christmas shopping, along with daily deliveries through Christmas Eve. Only full-service stores in Paramus, N.J., and Puerto Rico, will not be open 24 hours a day.

By Len Shneyder, Senior Marketing Manager, OtherLevels

The numbers are out and they don’t lie: Almost 40% of all online traffic during Black Friday was driven by mobile devices. That figure is up 34% from the previous year, according to IBM’s Holiday Benchmark. But what’s more impressive than that is that nearly one-fifth of all online sales during the holiday shopping bonanza came from mobile devices.

UPS expects to accommodate more than 78 million online tracking requests on Tuesday, December 17 thanks in part to new mobile capabilities that offer shoppers unprecedented supply chain visibility.

Rakuten LinkShare announced double-digit year-over-year growth during Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, driven primarily by transactions conducted on mobile devices.

Boca Raton, Fla. – Office Depot is expanding 3D Systems Cube 3-D printing services to 150 Office Depot stores nationwide.

Customers can experience 3-D printing demonstrations in stores in eight states or print on their own by purchasing the Cube or CubeX applications from www.officedepot.com. Participating states are California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Nevada, Oregon and Texas.

The race to improve customer convenience by leveraging smart e-commerce logistics in the supply chain is heating up in the U.S. and internationally. So far, the U.S. is ahead of the pack in e-commerce sales, raking in $351.8 billion during 2012, a full 33.7% of all e-commerce purchases worldwide, according to the new Jones Lang LaSalle Global E-Commerce Report.

UPS expects to pick up more than 34 million packages Monday, Dec. 16, and expects to deliver 29 million packages globally Tuesday, Dec. 17, driven by e-commerce growth. The surge in volume during peak week — the final full week before Christmas, Dec. 16–20 — is a record for a single day at the package delivery company.

Walnut Creek, Calif. – Most retailers have yet to adapt their supply chains to the emerging omni-channel retail model. According to a new report from RSR Research, “Supply Chain Execution 2014: Making Omni-channel Profitable,” although most retail supply chains are only designed to fulfill the store channel, store is the third-most-common channel slated for retailer investment in the next three years (67%), with online/e-commerce (82%) and mobile commerce (70%) ahead.