Branding

At first glance, Westfield San Francisco Centre appears to be a typical American shopping mall with the usual rotation of mass-market retailers, a food court and a movie theater. But perched on the top level is an office most shoppers probably don't know about that's designing the next generation of retail, bearing little resemblance to the current setup. A row of glass windows tucked into the side of the mall houses Westfields Labs — the digital arm of Westfield Group, which owns and operates more than 40 shopping malls globally. The lab is tasked with rethinking how today's consumers shop.

With product names such as "All Nighter," "Full Frontal," "Naked" and "Perversion," Urban Decay has been promoting its notion of "beauty with an edge" for almost 20 years. Launched in 1996, the cosmetics line offered an alternative to premium makeup's sweet standards of pink, red and beige. Urban Decay's colors — and the brand's overall attitude — were inspired by cityscapes and an electric underground vibe. So it may come as something of a surprise that Urban Decay's first brick-and-mortar store is set to open Monday at an upscale shopping mall overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Newport Beach, Calif.

The term omnichannel is thrown around so much in the retail industry these days that it begins to become just noise in some respects. In a session yesterday at the Shop.org Annual Summit in Seattle titled Defining Omnichannel for Your Brand: Setting Priorities to Meet Customer Expectations, it was interesting that Troy Brown, executive vice president of e-commerce and omnichannel at Zumiez, the youth culture fashion retailer, said that the term is rarely if ever used at the company.

Home furnishings and housewares retailer Williams-Sonoma is enjoying profitable growth in a competitive marketplace. What's its secret? Pat Connolly, chief strategy and business development officer for the San Francisco-based company, provided some insight into that question for the audience at NEMOA's directXchange Fall Conference in Groton, Conn. yesterday. Specifically, Connolly outlined six beliefs that Williams-Sonoma holds as integral to its success.

Our marketing experts will discuss key online and offline merchandising best practices and strategies.

Three retailers have been named "geniuses," and it may not be who you expected (well, at least one of the companies). L2, a business benchmarking service, awarded Nordstrom, Macy's and Sears "genius status," the highest honor of a five-tiered ranking system in its recent Digital IQ Index: Department Stores. Macy's and Nordstrom have been ranked highly in the past, however, I have to admit, I was surprised to see ailing retailer Sears join them at the top of the list. Over the last few months, we've heard reports of Sears closing multiple storefronts as well as management issues. Just this past week it was reported that the company probably won't last past the 2016 fiscal year. So how did Sears earn the title of "genius"?

Alison LePard, a 19-year-old college sophomore from Wellesley, Mass., says that when she shops for clothes and accessories, her goal is a look that's uniquely hers. So she does a lot of mixing and matching. "I don't blindly follow what they put out," LePard said of store displays. "I don't want to wear just one brand. I don't want to be a stereotype." She's hardly alone. Recent surveys have found that members of the U.S. millennial generation — the roughly 80 million Americans born between 1977 and 2000 — pride themselves on their individuality, and shop accordingly.

Etsy, the online marketplace for homemade and vintage products and other "unique goods," announced on Tuesday that it was banning the Redskins name and logo from its site, effective immediately. "Like the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, we at Etsy find the opinion of the minority group itself to carry most weight in determining whether the mascot is disparaging," the company said in a statement posted on its blog. "Native American groups have consistently advocated and litigated that the term ‘redskin(s)’ is disparaging and damaging to Native Americans. Therefore, it will no longer be permitted in our marketplace."

The days of impossibly thin models and botched Photoshop jobs may soon be behind us. Yesterday, ModCloth, an e-retailer specializing in vintage-inspired and independently created clothing and accessories, became the first retailer to sign the "Heroes Pledge For Advertisers," promising not to "change the shape, size, proportion, color and/or remove/enhance the physical features" of models in advertisements post-production. This marks an important victory for the anti-airbrushing activists behind the Truth In Advertising Act, a bipartisan bill introduced in March that calls for the government to create a regulatory framework for advertisements to ensure they aren't deceiving.

Back in April, Banana Republic announced that it had appointed Marissa Webb its new creative director in the pursuit of a more fashionable image. After posting a cryptic Instagram on Wednesday night signaling the forthcoming arrival of #thenewBR, the brand has now dropped the first images from its fall campaign under Webb's direction. From what we can tell so far, the look involves a lot of slim silhouettes in shades of