Innovation Labs

In the real world, the big usually eat the small. The strong eat the weak. The fast outstrip the slow. But in startup culture, disruption and innovation are inextricably linked with smaller companies backed by private funding. In the typical narrative, large, publicly traded companies are cast as defenders of the status quo — and…

Total Retail is excited to present its seventh annual ranking of the 100 fastest-growing publicly traded retailers. This year’s list, as in years past, is based on companies’ year-over-year net sales growth, comparing the 2016 fiscal year to the 2015 fiscal year.

Casey Carl, the executive charged with spearheading innovation at Target Corp., is leaving the company as CEO Brian Cornell refocuses efforts on the core business and tries to find quick ways to revitalize stores amid falling sales. Carl has pushed Target to think about the direction of retail beyond the next few years, but the retailer…

Casey Carl, the executive charged with spearheading innovation at Target Corp., is leaving the company as CEO Brian Cornell refocuses efforts on the core business and tries to find quick ways to revitalize stores amid falling sales. Carl has pushed Target to think about the direction of retail beyond the next few years, but the retailer […]

In episode 69 of Total Retail Talks, recorded at this week's National Retail Federation Big Show in New York City, Total Retail's Executive Editor Joe Keenan interviews Lisa Gavales, president and CEO of Things Remembered. Gavales discusses what innovation means for the personalized gifts retailer, how testing influences Things Remembered's product selection — both in-store…

Experiential retail is widely considered not only a trend of this year, but something retailers need to be aware of in 2017. Yesterday, Apple's retail chief Angela Ahrendts shared how the brand is capitalizing on experiential retail and introducing newly redesigned retail outlets, not just as stores, but as the company's next big products. In…

Fall is in the air, and that can mean only one thing for the e-commerce industry: We all come together for one of the biggest online retailing conferences of the year. Every fall, retailers make the pilgrimage to the Shop.org Digital Summit to learn about the latest digital shopping trends and technologies to improve their…

When we think of Lowe's, we think of a retailer on top of its game. From its partnership with Google Tango to bring augmented reality to consumers to a seamless social strategy, Lowe's epitomizes what an omnichannel retailer looks like. In episode 44 of Total Retail Talks,Melissa Campanelli, editor-in-chief of Total Retail, talks with Kyle…

Almost a year ago, Healey Cypher was proudly showing Forbes around eBay’s retail innovation lab, a secretive arm of the e-commerce giant that he had built from scratch to develop technology for brick-and-mortar stores. Having cobbled together funds and uncovered a forgotten office space a few miles from the company’s San Jose headquarters, the 31-year-old…

Kyle Nel is executive director of Lowe's Innovation Labs, where he's developed the Lowe's Holoroom, an augmented and virtual reality home improvement design tool, the OSHbot autonomous retail service robot, and in-store and online 3-D scanning and printing. In Nel’s words: “I (and my team) build new technologies that solve consumer problems, as envisioned through…