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Kids design the darndest things. J.Crew announced that four-year-old Mayhem (nicknamed for her free spirit) is helping design a capsule collection for the Spring 2015 crewcuts line of clothing, shoes and accessories. The company first came across the wunderkind on her blog Fashion By Mayhem (run with help from her parents, of course), where the youngster was grabbing the spotlight when she began recreating looks from the Oscars and the Met Ball earlier this year. Since, it's been a whirlwind year for Mayhem, who has been all over the country, even attending New York Fashion Week.

Amazon.com, pushing hard to pick up more business during the holiday season, wants you to make a deal. Taking a page from the likes of eBay and Priceline, Amazon is introducing a new dutch auction-style feature. Users can now "Make an Offer" on a product, suggesting a lower price to the vendor than the one listed on Amazon. Amazon is rolling this out across about 150,000 items initially and says that the plan will be to extend this to "hundreds of thousands of items" by 2015.

Is giving to others the greatest gift of all? Even the sourest Scrooge might admit the idea has merit after checking out J.C. Penney's #JustGotJingled campaign from EVB and Victors & Spoils. J.C. Penney staffers approach customers and offer them the chance to "buy" presents for their fellow shoppers. The givers get to choose the lucky recipients (who must be strangers) and tell them they can pick out gifts for themselves from any department in the store. J.C. Penney picks up the tab, and there are no price limits or any other restrictions. 

The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that warehouse workers who fill orders for retail giant Amazon.com don't have to be paid for time spent waiting to pass through security checks at the end of their shifts. The unanimous decision is a victory for the growing number of retailers and other companies that routinely screen workers to prevent employee theft. The justices said federal law doesn't require companies to pay employees for the extra time because it's unrelated to their primary job duties. 

Abercrombie & Fitch's longtime CEO Michael Jeffries is retiring, effective immediately, as the once-hip teen clothing chain's sales decline. Jeffries is also retiring from the retailer's board of directors. He has served as CEO since February 1992, according to CapitalIQ. "I believe now is the right time for new leadership to take the company forward in the next phase of its development," Jeffries said in a statement.

Not so fast, Amazon.com. Best Buy has raised the stakes in the online shopping wars by offering an eye-popping holiday promotion: free two-day delivery on thousands of items on its website. The deal, which went live over the weekend, is an aggressive move by the electronics retailer to win over holiday shoppers who are especially concerned about shipping speed when making online purchases in the home stretch before Christmas. Best Buy hasn't yet announced an end date for the holiday delivery offer.

Black Friday is a tough day for all involved, from the folks who wait outside for bargains to the employees inside who face frantic consumers rushing after those great deals. But perhaps the day after Thanksgiving this year was a little easier for Target employees in Westminster, Maryland, thanks to one electronics department worker who got up on a checkout counter and delivered what had to be the most rousing pre-Black Friday speech ever. 

There they are — the millennials — shopping in the stores of their choice and texting to their friends what's hot and what's not. The retailer has almost no sway in their merchandise preferences — much less color preferences. Trends in fashion are hard to define for them — they're more likely to be anti-trends. They were first called Generation Z, but that didn't fit their DNA. Now they're called "Cybrids." In a recent discussion with Erica Orange, vice president with consulting firm Weiner, Edrich, and Brown, she described the current youth as cyber hybrids, or Cybrids for short. 

Women's apparel retailer bebe is the latest big-name store to fall victim to a breach exposing customers’ credit and debit card information. bebe detected suspicious activity in its in-store payment processing system between Nov. 8 and Nov. 26, the retailer said Friday. Hackers could have accessed cardholder names, account numbers, expiration dates and verification codes for customers who shopped in-store during that period. Online and mobile purchasers weren't affected in the breach.

U.S. retailers beware — the British are coming! But it's not just the Brits. The Italians, French, Spanish and more are also invading the U.S., capitalizing on prime real estate as several homegrown brands shutter stores. Perhaps most emblematic of the shift is Sears’ recent announcement that it will lease out space in seven locations to European retailer Primark, which is opening its first U.S. store in Boston next year. Sears will still retain a significant presence in six of these spots.