News

PBteen has unveiled an inaugural collaboration with celebrity stylists and fashion designers Emily Current and Meritt Elliott. The exclusive, one-of-a-kind collection is the first collaboration of its kind for PBteen and represents Current’s and Elliott’s debut into the world of interiors and home furnishings.

Shopko is turning to Innotrac Corporation, a commerce provider that integrates digital technology, fulfillment, contact center and business intelligence solutions, to help the retailer bolster its e-commerce business.

The retailer carries products in a broad range of categories including apparel, electronics, health and beauty, home goods, toys and sporting goods and furniture. Shopko manufactures its own private label brands and in addition to carrying name brands such as Keurig, Adidas, Reebok, Kitchen Aid, Fisher-Price and Sony.

More than 20 Sears Home Appliance Showroom and Sears Appliance & Hardware stores in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware have unveiled kitchen remodeling services from Kitchen Tune-Up, a national kitchen and bath remodeling franchise.

The stores feature an interactive Kitchen Tune-Up kiosk, where customers can learn about affordable options to update their kitchen, view cabinet door samples and use an iPad to see project ideas and book an appointment for a no-obligation estimate.

Chico, Calif. – Online home improvement retailer Build.com is using Adobe Marketing Cloud as the cornerstone of its digital marketing strategies, diving deeper into visitor data to better understand what they are looking for, how they navigate online, where they are coming from, and what drives purchase decisions.

Kmart announced the start of its 2013 St. Jude Thanks and Giving campaign, which incentivizes Shop Your Way members to make donations to the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital for childhood cancer in exchange for reward points.

Members of the Shop Your Way loyalty program who donate between now and Dec. 28 will receive a coupon for 5% of the price back in points that they can use toward their next purchase. The offer lasts through Jan. 31, 2014.

The Hillshire Brands Company will be hosting a panel — “Using Social Tools to Inform Strategies” — at Social Media Week in Chicago Tuesday, Sept. 24. Moderated by entrepreneur and TV personality Bill Rancic, the panel will explore the significance of social insights that impact owned, earned and paid media strategies, and discuss approaches to leveraging the right mix of tools to garner these insights.

Mindshare Technologies, a leading Voice of the Customer (VoC) technologies provider, has acquired Empathica, a leading global provider of social Customer Experience Management solutions. 

The acquisition establishes Mindshare as the largest VoC provider in the food services and retail industries, and will allow the company to grow aggressively in contact centers and hospitality.

The acquisition was financed in part by Sorenson Capital and Peterson Partners. Cascadia Capital served as Empathica’s financial adviser in the transaction.

Framingham, Mass. – T.J. Maxx has quietly relaunched its e-commerce site, eight years after initially attempting to sell products online, without any promotion or official announcement. A Boston Globe article indicates the site went live on Sept. 18.