News Briefs

The granddaddy of online sales events is shifting its timing.

Confirming earlier media speculation, Amazon announced it will move its annual Amazon Prime Day sales extravaganza, which requires membership in its Prime subscription service to participate, from its traditional mid-July setting to unspecified dates in June.  The news came as the company released its first-quarter results, which included a 17% increase in net sales.

Prime Day 2026 will take place in June in Austria, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Egypt, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, the U.K. and the U.S. The event will occur later this summer in Australia, Brazil, India and Japan.

The only other two times Prime Day occurred outside of July were 2020, when it was pushed to October due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and in 2021 when Amazon hosted the event in June as the economy was still in recovery from the pandemic.

According to previous media reports, major motivations for the change reportedly include having Prime Day occur in the second quarter of Amazon’s fiscal year rather than the third quarter, as well as capturing more back-to-school sales.

In July 2025, Amazon expanded Prime Day from two days to four days and exceeded projections with $24.1 billion in sales. 

[READ MORE: Three signals from a four-day Amazon Prime Day]

While the July timing of Prime Day has made it the unofficial kickoff to the holiday shopping season, the retailer also now hosts an annual two-day October sales event called Prime Big Deal Days, as well as several other early holiday promotions in October and November and a major Black Friday-Cyber Monday sales effort.

Numerous retailers, including top Amazon competitors such as Walmart and Target, host their own annual July sales events timed to overlap Prime Day. It remains to be seen if those promotions would also shift to late June.

Albertsons is enabling participants in its retail media network to reach shoppers via YouTube.

The grocery conglomerate’s Albertsons Media Collective retail media arm is now allowing brand partners to deliver ads through and obtain measurement from YouTube using the Google Display & Video 360 marketing platform.

As a result, advertisers can gain visibility into SKU-level performance by audience, media channel, and inventory type, as well as on-demand optimization insights to help obtain deeper understanding of shopper behavior to assist development of future campaigns. 

SKU-level performance analysis is seamlessly provided by LiveRamp, with no additional action required by brands. Through seamless Google workflows, advertisers can maintain full control over budget, creativity, targeting, and optimization.

“Our 36 million weekly shoppers are at the heart of every partnership we build at Albertsons Media Collective,” said Evan Hovorka, VP product innovation, Albertsons Media Collective. “Our collaboration with Google extends the power of real, purchase-based insights by bringing our first-party data into YouTube and DV360. This enables brands to seamlessly reach our shoppers where they’re already streaming and engaging—creating a more relevant, connected, and impactful online shopping experience. A true win-win for brands and customers alike."  

Other Albertsons Media Collective advertising collaborations include a partnership with ad technology provider Perion Network Ltd. to give brands the ability to activate against Albertsons’ purchase-based first-party audiences across Perion's display and digital out-of-home (DOOH) formats.    

[READ MORE: Albertsons extends retail media network via new partnership]

Headquartered in Boise, Idaho, Albertsons Companies operates more than 2,200 stores across 34 states and the District of Columbia under more than 20 banners including Albertsons, Safeway, Vons, Jewel-Osco, Shaw's, Acme, Tom Thumb, Randalls, United Supermarkets, Pavilions, Star Market, Haggen, Carrs, Kings Food Markets and Balducci's Food Lovers Market.

Boll & Branch continues to expand in brick and mortar.

The digitally-native luxury bedding and home textiles brand has opened its first permanent location in the Chicago area, at Westfield Old Orchard, in Skokie, Ill. Three additional locations are planned to open through the remainder of the year.

The 1,430-sq.-ft. store features Boll & Branch’s luxury bedding and bath collections. It also offers in-store design services, including one-on-one sessions with a stylist to explore collections and design goals.

Boll & Branch currently operates 15 stores nationwide. By expanding in markets where it already has an established customer base, the company said it is strengthening a “seamless” online-to-offline experience that allows customers to engage with products in person while maintaining continuity across its digital channels. 

“Following our successful pilot at Oakbrook Center, we are thrilled to be opening our permanent home in the Chicago area at Westfield Old Orchard in Skokie," said Katia Unlu, chief commercial officer at Boll & Branch. "What makes a Boll & Branch store unlike anything else is the level of service we bring to every customer. From personalized bedding consultations to in-home installations and custom bed styling, our team is here to make the experience of creating a beautiful home effortless."

An eco-friendly, comfort-driven global footwear brand is expanding in the United States.

Vivaia has opened its second U.S. location, at Roosevelt Field Mall in Garden City, N.Y., with another NYC metro area location set to open on May 10, at Garden State Plaza in Paramus, N.J. Seven more locations are set to roll out during the year.

Vivaia opened its first permanent U.S. store in spring 2025, in New York City’s SoHo district. The brand also has wholesale partnerships with select department store, including Nordstrom, Dillards and Von Maur.

Roosevelt Field  

Vivaia said its store at Roosevelt Field Mall is inspired by “wabi sabi” principles of simplicity, asymmetry and imperfection. The 650-sq.-ft. space combines light wood-toned furniture, minimal design, and curated lighting to create a calm, natural shopping experience.

"The U.S. is our most important market and a key driver of our online growth, so expanding beyond New York is a natural next step," Jeff Chan, co-founder of Vivaia said in a statement. "By combining strong digital momentum with physical retail, we're able to serve more customers and bring our comfort-driven, eco-friendly products closer to them."

Committed to eco-friendly innovation, Vivaia partners with certified Repreve suppliers to transform recycled PET bottles into high-quality yarns, using advanced 3D knitting to create durable, low-waste footwear. Its signature elastic knit uppers are designed to provide a flexible, custom-like fit for all-day wear.

Founded in 2020 as a DTC brand, Vivaia surpassed 75 stores worldwide in 2025, with offline retail doubling year-over-year and strong traffic at its SoHo location, the company said. 

(Photo: Vivaia, Roosevelt Field Mall)

Amazon continues expanding its partnership with a major developer of next-gen artificial intelligence solutions.

The online giant is integrating solutions and features from OpenAI, developer of generative AI model ChatGPT, into its Amazon Bedrock AI platform. Amazon is building on a multi-year, $38 billion strategic partnership it entered with OpenAI in November 2025 and increased to near $140 billion in February 2026.

[READ MORE: Amazon, OpenAI expanding partnership to almost $140B]

Amazon is now launching a limited preview of three new offerings from OpenAI on the Amazon Bedrock platform:

For the first time, customers of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud services subsidiary will have access to OpenAI frontier models through the services they already use for model access, fine-tuning, and orchestration. 

This means customers can evaluate and deploy OpenAI models alongside models from Anthropic, Meta, Mistral, Cohere, Amazon, and other AI providers, all through a single service with unified security, governance, and cost controls.

With Codex on Amazon Bedrock, enterprise users have access to the OpenAI coding agent within the AWS environments where they already operate at scale. Customers can authenticate using their AWS credentials, process inference through Amazon Bedrock infrastructure, and apply Codex usage toward their AWS cloud commitments. Codex on Bedrock is available through the Bedrock API, starting with the Codex CLI, the Codex desktop app, and Visual Studio Code extension.

Bedrock managed agents combins OpenAI frontier models and agentic capabilities with AWS global infrastructure, security and services. Agents are production-ready and can be deployed without developing supporting infrastructure. Users can also leverage the Bedrock AgentCore open platform to build, connect and optimize OpenAI agentic solutions.

Amazon and OpenAI say they will continue collaborating and bringing new capabilities to Bedrock.

[READ MORE: Papa Johns expands Google AI partnership]

Papa John's International Inc. is co-headquartered in Atlanta and in Louisville, Ky. and is the world's third-largest pizza delivery company with more than 6,000 restaurants in approximately 50 countries and territories.