News

West Elm will open its first Idaho store, in downtown Boise, on Thursday, June 9.

The 14,158-sq.-ft. -store incorporated wooden “Tater Blocks” salvaged from the renovation of Simplot’s Caldwell-based potato storage facility into the store’s custom interior design. The blocks, once used as industrial flooring for potato storage facilities, have been repurposed to create a unique art installation at the new store.

Consumers love to shop and love using social media, but somehow the two passions are not connecting.
 
Twitter, which has been piloting an embedded buy button in tweets since September 2014, is abandoning the effort. Recent studies from Forrester and GlobalWebIndex indicate generally low consumer usage rates for social buy buttons, which are also offered by platforms such as Pinterest and Instagram.
 

Image credit: Ted Eytan, CC by 2.0   While many retailers are focused on making stores a destination to experience, some aim for an even higher level of customer engagement by casting themselves in the role of community center.     Others have even become a global destination for enthusiasts. These retailers understand that one way to energize a fervent fan base is to offer a singular fan base. Here are a few examples:   

Amazon.com shoppers in the Midwest may be able to get a variety of goods a little quicker in the near future.

The e-tail giant plans to open two fulfillment centers in Edwardsville, Illinois, and create more than 1,000 full-time jobs between the facilities when they open. Amazon has an existing Illinois fulfillment center in Joliet where it currently employs 1,500 full-time employees, and also recently announced it will open a second Joliet facility that will create another 2,000 full-time jobs.

The National Retail Federation (NRF) has asked the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to conduct an investigation into an organization founded by the credit card industry that sets data security standards.

According to a letter from NRF senior VP and general counsel Mallory Duncan to FTC chairwoman Edith Ramirez, the practices of the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI DSS) raise antitrust concerns.

By removing manual effort from the checkout and cash management processes in stores, Sunbury, Pennsylvania-based supermarket chain Weis Markets Inc. is making shopping easier.

Weis Markets has signed an agreement with Balance Innovations to provide its vbScout self-checkout management solution in all stores offering self-checkout, as well as VeriBalance currency management software and vbInSight corporate reporting software in all 162 stores in Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, New Jersey and West Virginia.

Increasingly, retailers are recognizing the need to remove boundaries between channels to maximize customer satisfaction.
 
According to the 2016 Customer Experience/Unified Commerce Survey from Boston Retail Partners, 51% of retailers indicate that creating a seamless experience across channels is their top priority. To support a seamless customer experience, 23% of the retailers surveyed have already implemented a single, unified commerce platform and another 52% plan to implement one within the next three years.
 

With a couple of exceptions, May same-store sales figures reported by several major apparel, specialty and discount chains were less than impressive.

First the good news. Bath & Body Works reported a 3% same-store sales lift for May 2016 compared to the same month a year earlier. Same-store sales at Costco Wholesale Corp. and L Brands were flat, which may not sound that encouraging but was better than most other retailers reporting figures for the month.

Here is a roundup of other chains reporting negative same-store sales growth for the month.