Store Systems

By Jeff Wakefield, Verifone

Mobility. It is such a broad concept, meaning different things to merchants and consumers. Mobile acceptance, mobile payments, mobile POS, mobile shopping – each plays a distinct part in the overall mobile experience and each has different risks and rewards.

Within this larger mobile arena, the security of the mobile payment device offers the greatest risk for both merchants and consumers alike.

Atlanta - Shopko has selected Innotrac and Micros as its new e-commerce solution. The Shopko e-commerce site is powered by Micros on the front end with Innotrac's OMS, CRM, fulfillment and business intelligence on the back end.

Woodland Hills, Calif. — GrowLife will open its seventh hydroponic retail location in Santa Rosa, Calif., in October.

The new 3,800-sq.-ft. location will support the company’s online superstores.

Burlington, Ontario -- Ikea announced the completion of North America's largest Ikea location, in Ville St. Laurent. Growing from 237,473 sq ft to 469,694 sq ft, the state-of-the-art Ikea Montreal will host a warehouse that is twice the size, doubling the amount of products available to take home at any time.

The new store will also offer customers 1407 parking spots, 600 seats in the restaurant, 48 cash lanes, 54 room settings and 2 full home settings.

New York -- For the second consecutive month, Jcrew.com ranked No. 1 overall in customer service performance in the Stella Monthly Benchmarks, a ranking of the best online customer service performance in the United States. Rounding out the top five, were the e-commerce sites of Ralph Lauren, L.L.Bean, Kate Spade and Saks Fifth Avenue.

West Chester, Pa. – QVC has promoted John Cowan to the position of senior VP, information technology global services. Cowan was most recently VP global systems & initiatives.

Since joining in QVC in 1994, Cowan has held positions of increasing responsibility, including VP, business strategy and technology integration, and VP of business technology. He also played a key role in the start-up of QVC in Germany and Japan, and recently assisted QVC Italy in deploying a new systems release in September 2012.

Puyallup, Wash. — WiggleWorks Kids has leased a 4,500-sq.-ft. space for an indoor playground and birthday party center in the South Hill Mall in Puyallup, Wash. WiggleWorks will open the first week in December. It will be WiggleWorks second playground. The first is in Bellevue, Wash.

In addition to the playground, the WiggleWorks offers a semi-private part room equipped with a small kitchen for birthday parties, community gatherings and family gatherings.

Camp Hill, Pa. -- Rite Aid Corp. reported that it swung to  profit in the second-quarter profit, fueled by increased sales and stronger margins. The drugstore chain raised its full-year forecast.

Rite Aid reported a profit of $32.8 million for the quarter ended Aug. 31, compared with a year-earlier loss of $38.8 million. It was the chain’s fourth-straight quarterly profit.

Sales for the quarter were $6.3 billion, up from $6.2 billion in the year ago period. Same-store sales were up by 1%,