E-Commerce

The Retail Industry Leaders Association may sue the state if officials don’t require Amazon.com to pay sales taxes when it begins using two distribution centers now under construction in Tennessee.

American Apparel, the vertically integrated clothing manufacturer based in downtown Los Angeles, is announcing a multiyear partnership with eBay to create the first full online lifestyle shop on the popular auction site. It's expected to become a multimillion dollar business within the first year.

Frooogal.com will debut in August as a new platform for flash sales of luxury products. As the newest site in a growing cast of flash-sale retailers, Frooogal.com will feature daily deals on deluxe products at up to 70 percent off retail. Membership is free to buyers and vendors pay a nominal percentage of their sales. Approved vendors submit and upload their product images and plan their sales by setting their own prices and choosing the dates of their sales thus ensuring them a higher margin on the sale of their products.

Listen in as David Wertheimer, CEO of Canopy, a business unit of web design and engineering firm Alexander Interactive that focuses on the online retail space, discusses the new programming language HTML5 and what it means for your business.

American Express has launched “Link, Like, Love,” a new daily-deal program and app. The best part of this new daily-deals e-commerce solution is that you don’t need to “buy” a deal to take advantage of it.

Forrester Research Analyst Sucharita Mulpuru was on hand at the Retail Email Exchange symposium in San Diego last month to offer best practices for four current trends in the e-commerce space. Looking to debunk conventional wisdom, Mulpuru advised that things often turn out to be different than they initially appear. With that in mind, here are the four trends that Mulpuru addressed:

eBay has introduced a "Gear Up for College" campaign featuring an inspired, interactive destination for students to discover and shop back-to-school merchandise available on eBay.

Wildlife Works announced the launch of a new retail model that uses the power of Facebook to enable consumers to offset their travel, home use and personal lifestyle events that contribute to global warming. The Milyoni-powered Wildlife Works Facebook storefront allows consumers to easily offset their carbon footprints as well as purchase carbon neutral apparel without leaving the 750 million-strong social network.

If you're tired of buying brand new clothes for your kids only to have them outgrow them, as children do, or ruin them, as children also do, then subscription-based clothing website Plum is your answer. Founder Caroline O'Connor describes her website as "Netflix for baby clothes," because you know, giving your kids hand-me-downs would be today's embarassing equivalent of renting at Blockbuster.

While daily deals have become increasingly popular with consumers, there's conflicting information about whether such offers are worth it for businesses. For some, the payoff doesn't justify the payout even though others enjoy profits and new customers from the venture.