News

Citizen commerce comes to retail
This past summer President Obama turned heads when the White House hosted a curious sounding event called a Maker Faire. The event was created to recognize people known as “Makers” and the global movement they are a part of that is upending traditional product development cycles, the consumer acceptance curve and the retail industry.
In era of app overload Shopfeed eyes simplicity
A new app from Shopfeed is designed to streamline the product discovery process in a world where new products are said to be mentioned 400 million times a day online.

Shopfeed launched its new app to offer the most updated trends from magazines, blogs, and celebrities, all in one place by creating lists from the best of the Web in areas such as style, home, technology and entertainment.

Best Buy opening earlier on Thanksgiving

The dishes from Thanksgiving dinner will barely be dry when Best Buy stores open at 5 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 28, to treat shoppers to an early wave of doorbuster deals.
Luxottica Group goes live with JDA solution

Bracknell, England -- JDA Software Group announced that eyewear manufacturer/marketer Luxottica Group SpA has gone live with its implementation of JDA Supply Chain Planner, from the JDA Manufacturing Planning.
Kurt Salmon: Retailers to speed up holiday online processing/shipping by two days

New York -- Amid a public fight for Thanksgiving weekend foot traffic, retailers are also battling behind the scenes to prepare for peak-season e-commerce orders. According to a new Kurt Salmon survey, retailers will reduce their processing and shipping time frames for multi-item orders by almost two days this holiday season.
REI hires first chief creative officer

Leading national outdoor gear and apparel retailer REI named agency executive Ben Steele as the company's first ever chief creative officer.

Steele most recently served as executive creative director at Hornall Anderson in Seattle, a globally recognized brand experience design agency with additional offices in London and New York. He will start in his role at REI's headquarters on January 1, 2015.
REI names its first-ever chief creative officer

Seattle -- Outdoor outfitter REI has added a chief creative officer slot, and hired Ben Steele to fill the position, effective Jan. 1. Steele most recently served as executive creative director at global brand firm Hornall Anderson in Seattle.
RetailNext names IBM exec to marketing role

Marc Dietz has joined big data analytics provider RetailNext as chief marketing officer.

Dietz joins RetailNext from IBM where he led worldwide marketing for the company's SaaS portfolio, including multiple acquisitions such as DemandTec, Coremetrics, and Silverpop. Prior to the $440 million acquisition of DemandTec by IBM, Dietz led all marketing efforts at the cloud-based analytics provider for retailers and consumer products companies. He helped grow DemandTec from an early stage through IPO in 2007, and the IBM transaction in 2012, according to RetailNext.
Plug & Play’s CEO Corner: John McIntyre, Sightly

Plug and Play brings together retailers and start-ups that offer specific technology and expertise that can relieve merchants’ pain points. Chain Store Age’s Customer Disruption newletter provides a Q&A with the CEO of one of those companies in each issue. This time, the spotlight is on John McIntyre of Sightly. What does Sightly do?
Are you talking to me?

Recently, I participated in a strategic conference that included several sessions on how to effectively use advertising and promotion to reach moms, millennials, multiculturals and other shopper segments. Not surprisingly, significant emphasis was placed on the use of emerging digital and mobile media. But each session also reinforced that traditional media including television, radio, retail feature ads, and Free Standing Insert (FSI) coupons should not be undervalued.