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Founded by Don and Barbara Brinkerhoff nearly a half century ago, Lifescapes International made its bones as an architectural landscaping firm on the Vegas Strip, where it created the fire show at The Mirage and the water show at the Bellagio. What the founding couple learned in Vegas, their daughter, Julie Brinkerhoff-Jacobs, now applies to retail and lifestyle centers like Triple Five’s American Dream and Rockefeller Center’s Channel Gardens.

Retailers, developers attempt to turn shopping centers into gathering places with stores

Digital moves fast. Business people who disregard the devastating waves of changes it leaves will inevitably be engulfed by them. Consider this rising marketplace tsunami detected by Deloitte Consulting:

Do we come to bury Jeff Bezos, or to praise him?

When I was a boy, my Cioci Mary (cioci is Polish for aunt) would occasionally treat me to a trip downtown in the small city where I grew up. We’d get a burger at Pappas’ diner and then head to W.T. Grant’s and she’d buy me candy, a comic book and a small toy. I mist up a little just thinking about it now, more than 50 years later.

You think a child of today, decades hence, will recall his aunt buying him a pair of sneakers on her laptop as fondly?

Whole Foods Market is saving money and time — and benefiting the environment—by taking an innovative approach to going solar.

That’s according to an analysis by the Retail Industry Leaders Association and The Solar Foundation that found Whole Foods’ strategy of taking a standardized approach to rapid rollout of solar rooftop installations across multiple locations could be a valuable model for other retailers to consider.

TRENDING STORES: PetSmart debuted a new store concept that puts a big emphasis on pet services. The 7,400-sq.-ft. PetSmart Pet Spa, in Oceanside, N.Y., is decidedly smaller than PetSmart’s typical footprint and features a self-service dog wash, a grooming salon and a coffee bar-lounge area. The overall modern design includes a circular “concierge” desk with a bakery full of dog treats.…Amazon Books plans to open its fourth location, a 7,200-sq.-ft. store in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood.

Intelligent lighting can help improve back-of-the-house retail operations

While a lot of emphasis is placed on optimizing the front-of-the-house retail experience, improving back-of-the-house operations can also help retailers better meet customers’ evolving expectations — and intelligent lighting systems may be the key to improving those operations.

Planning is well under way for the 53rd annual SPECS conference, which will be held at the Gaylord Palms in Kissimmee, Fla., March 12–14, 2017. The event is produced by Chain Store Age and is attended by retail and foodservice executives involved in the planning, design, construction and maintenance of stores and restaurants nationwide.

To create meaningful experiences, retailers should take a page from the menu

At the Converse store on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, “customization maestros” help sneaker fans manufacture their dream shoe.

Shoppers, browsing the featured iPads, choose among 150 graphics, including those created by local artists. There is a wide selection of grommets, patches and lettering, along with swap-out drawstrings of various designs and color.

The Home Depot to modernize with next-gen handheld devices in DCs

For The Home Depot, supply chain efficiency is about getting product from vendor partners down to store level, or directly onto the front porch of its shoppers — all without increasing overhead costs.

With an eye on modernization, the retailer is leveraging its mobile device management platform to ease its upcoming transition to a new fleet of ruggedized handhelds across its supply chain.

Reinventing the traditional retailing experience is paramount to reaching a digitally savvy customer base, according to Joe Jensen, VP, Internet of Things group general manager, retail solutions division, Intel. Jensen discussed with Chain Store Age how retailers can meet this challenge.

What are the biggest challenges that retailers are facing in their customer engagement strategies?