News

New York – Almost all retailers consider Big Data to be important, according to a new survey from Accenture Analytics. When asked how important is Big Data to their organization, 94% of retail executives answered “important,” 58% responded “extremely important,” and 36% responded “important.”

San Jose, Calif. – Retail performance has continued to improve throughout 2014. According to the RetailNext Composite Index analyzing more than 15 million shopping trips across specialty and larger format retail stores within the U.S., the Consumer Confidence Index (CCI) rising for the fourth month is a positive sign for retailers going into fall season, and is reflected in uptick in conversion and sales per store of .4% and 4.2%, respectively.

Lewisville, Texas – Consumers are increasingly interested in the BOPIS (buy online, pickup in store) option for making purchases. According to a new survey of 1,992 U.S. adults by custom incentive company Parago, 63% of shoppers BOPIS (buy online, pickup in store) at least a few times a year, but 82% percent would consider doing so to receive a $10 rebate on a $50 item.

San Diego – For the month of August 2014, net sales at PriceSmart Inc. increased 7.3% to $206.7 million, from $192.6 million in August a year earlier. Same-store sales for the month increased 2.3%.

PriceSmart also announced the planned opening dates for the three warehouse clubs currently under construction in Colombia. The Bogota warehouse club is planned to open on Oct. 29; the Pereira warehouse club is planned to open on Nov. 13; and the Medellin warehouse club is planned to open on Nov. 26.

Philadelphia – Five Below plans to open a new distribution center in Oldmans Township, New Jersey, in 2015. The center will replace an existing 421,000-sq.-ft. facility located in New Castle, Delaware.

Five Below will occupy approximately 700,000 sq. ft. of the facility to start with, and plans to grow to one million sq. ft. over time. The new distribution center, which is expected to be fully operational in the second half of 2015, will support the company's continued growth and expansion on the East Coast.

Menomonee Falls, Wis. – Kohl’s Department Stores is launching an omnichannel partnership with lifestyle brand Juicy Couture. Juicy Couture products are now available at Kohl’s stores nationwide and at the dedicated URL Kohls.com/JuicyCouture.

Nashville, Tenn. – Cognitive computing provider Digital Reasoning has released Synthesys 3.9, the latest release of its machine learning platform for analyzing human language data at scale. Synthesys 3.9 provides capabilities to detect key risk and performance indicators in human communication and automatically connect and aggregate information based on those indicators.

Vancouver – E-commerce company Elastic Path Software Inc. has secured $5.88 million in equity investments led by BDC Venture Capital IT Fund, with participation from Yaletown Venture Partners and individual investors. The company will use the funds to support development for its patent-pending enterprise commerce products.

Goodlettsville, Tenn. – Dollar General Corp. is upping the ante in its $9.1 billion bid to purchase Family Dollar Inc. by making a hostile takeover offer to Family Dollar stockholders of $80 per share. This offer beats the $74.50 per share, $8.5 billion offer Family Dollar has accepted from Dollar Tree Inc, and is a 32% premium over the closing price of $60.66 for Family Dollar stock on Sept. 9.
 

Recently, I was out shopping with my children and we saw a pay phone bolted to the wall near the checkout line of a store. It didn’t appear to be operational, but there it stood. “What’s that?” my 11-year-old daughter asked.