News

Mobile will drive more than half of Thanksgiving Day online shopping visits (51%) for the first time in 2015.

That is just one mobile-friendly statistic from the new Adobe 2015 Digital Index Online Shopping Predictions. The Index also forecasts mobile will account for close to a third (29%) of all holiday sales, a 12% increase from 2014. iOS will drive 22% of sales, Android just 7%.

O’Reilly Automotive plans to accelerate its expansion plans in 2016 following record revenue and profit in the third quarter.

The auto parts retailer now plans to open 210 new stores next year. The company is also on track to open 205 new stores by the end of 2015.

Build-A-Bear Workshop logged an increase in same store sales in the third quarter even as the company enters what is historically its most profitable season.

Same store sales at the specialty retailer increased 2.1% in the third quarter ended Oct. 3. This was the fifth consecutive quarter it grew same store sales.

In the wake of the news that Walgreens Boots Alliance would be acquiring Rite Aid, Walgreens CEO Stefano Pessina told the New York Times that he is open to opportunities that would expand the company’s footprint around the globe.“Due to my age, I won’t have a possibility to make many more acquisitions,” Pessina told the Times. “And unfortunately, I cannot amuse myself dealing directly with small acquisitions, and dealing directly with owners and so on. ...

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube have some new competition as social commerce tools.

Visual commerce provider Curalate is releasing Curalate Reveal, a new solution enabling consumers to discover and shop products by clicking on images in blogs. Thus retailers can create shopping experiences on their own blogs or blogs of key influencers.

Just a few weeks after losing its CEO, Tuesday Morning posted impressive financial results for the first quarter, including an increase in same-store sales.

For the first quarter ended Sept. 30, the Texas-based off-price retailer posted a same-store sales increase of 3.6%. Net sales were $202.3 million, slightly higher than the prior year period. The company ended the first quarter with a store count of 757, a decrease of 44 stores year over year. Operating loss for the first quarter was $6 million.

Target Corp. may have shuttered its Canadian stores, but that doesn’t mean the discounter is done with global retailing.

According to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Target has expanded a 2014 pilot program that made about 200,000 items available to U.K. customers via eBay to 64 countries. Target is also partnering with international shipping logistics firm Borderfree in a test of a new global e-commerce site, intl.target.com.

Baseball’s great accidental philosopher Yogi Berra once said, “If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.” In the retail business, knowing where you’re going means understanding sales, inventory, promotions, pricing, and assortment.