News

CROSSMARK exec named CEO at WIS
The retail inventory specialist firm WIS International named merchandising and marketing services veteran Jim Rose as its new president and CEO.

Rose most recently served as president of marketing services at CROSSMARK, a leading provider of marketing and merchandising services. Rose also previously served as chairman and CEO for Mosaic Sales Solutions and also held senior roles at The Nielsen Company and MPG, a global advertising and communications company.
Study: Amazon doubles overall e-commerce same-store sales in Oct.
Morrisville, N.C. -- Amazon.com’s same-store increase rate dropped from September to October 2013, but still more than doubled the same-store sales growth rate of overall e-commerce. According to data from cloud-based e-commerce solutions provider ChannelAdvisor, Amazon's October same-store sales came in at 32.4%, a decrease compared to August's 37.9%.

Report: RadioShack cuts back Thanksgiving hours

Fort Worth, Texas –- RadioShack Corp. is reportedly placing a midday break into its previously planned all-day store hours for Thanksgiving. According to Bloomberg, an internal company memo shows that RadioShack, which had previously planned to keep stores open from 8 a.m. to midnight on Thanksgiving, will now close stores between noon and 5p.m. that day.
NRF: Almost half of holiday shoppers haven’t begun

Washington, D.C. –- A large number of holiday shoppers are taking their time when it comes to starting the task of making holiday purchases. According to NRF’s Holiday Consumer Spending Survey conducted by Prosper Insights & Analytics, 45.6% of holiday shoppers say they haven’t started shopping yet.
Walmart stretching out Black Friday to five days

Bentonville, Ark. -- Following the lead of some other retailers, Walmart is spreading out Black Friday beyond the day after Thanksgiving.
Lowe’s provides omnichannel fulfillment with JDA-IBM solution

Mooresville, N.C. –- Lowe’s Companies Inc. is among the first users of an omnichannel fulfillment solution that is being jointly developed by JDA Software Group Inc. and IBM. The new initiative from the two technology providers will combine JDA intelligent fulfillment and labor productivity solutions with IBM Commerce and order management technology.
Five days of deals at Walmart

Walmart continues to expand its view of Black Friday and is encouraging shoppers to do the same by rethinking the practice of waiting in line on Black Friday to secure limited quantities of merchandise.
SAP and Samsung partner on mobile devices for business, including payments solution

New York -- Samsung Electronics and SAP SE are partnering to deliver enterprise mobility solutions for a number of industries, including an integrated payments solution.
Deeper Dive: Apple Pay vs. CurrentC

CurrentC, the mobile payment service under development from a retailer consortium known as Merchant Customer Exchange, or MCX, has been getting a lot of attention in the past week. First MCX members CVS and Rite Aid disabled their NFC payment systems to block the rival ApplePay mobile payment service, and then hackers stole the emails of CurrentC users. And despite all this publicity, CurrentC is still in pilot mode.
Alibaba reports $9.3 billion in sales on China’s “Singles Day” sales event

New York -- Alibaba Group Holding Limited announced that it hosted $9.3 billion in sales on China’s “Singles Day,” an annual sales event held on Nov. 11.

The E-commerce giant said that 43 of all Singles Day transactions came through mobile devices, up from 21% in 2013.