Omnichannel

If you spend long enough perusing through Amazon product pages, you're bound to discover some hilariously random and utterly useless offerings. Things like banana-shaped banana slicers, UFO detectors and bottle openers attached to a deer's rear! Even more bizarre, you'll be surprised to find that many of these product' prices are disproportionately high for what the item is. Who on earth would spend $60 on a horse head mask? Or, better yet, $200 on a book about how to avoid huge ships?!

Lowe's Companies, the world's second largest home improvement retailer, opened its global innovation center (GIC) in Bengaluru, India. The GIC will focus on next-generation customer experience by placing emphasis on technology and analytics to provide customers with a more personalized shopping experience. This center is also building a team to support Lowe's efforts to become an omnichannel home improvement company.

When Sephora launched in the U.S. in 1998, it radically changed the cosmetics buying experience, replacing the controlled department store counter transaction with a hands-on, candy store-style field day for makeup lovers. In recent years, the brand has aggressively integrated digital and in-store retail, and yesterday opened its new Innovation Lab, a team and facility focused on "envisioning the future of retail for Sephora, and making sure that we're staying ahead of our clients and the different trends that are out there," says Bridget Dolan, vice president of Sephora's Innovation Lab.

With the holiday shopping season in the rearview mirror and a new year ahead of us, retailers are counting up their 2014 profits and reflecting on the past year. The end of each year — and the close of the busiest shopping months of the year — brings forth new trends that will have a major impact on retailers as they're settling into their New Year's resolutions. As you toast to the New Year and look to continue to make investments in online and mobile, think about these trends that will impact you the most in 2015.

Are retail innovation labs here to stay or are they just a fad passing through the industry? The largest internet-based retailer in the United States, Amazon.com, serves as an enduring example of what retailers should be doing to maintain longevity. Amazon's relentless pursuit of disruptive innovation has resulted in some of the more intriguing retail technology products, including augmented reality and the Fire Phone, in addition to securing Amazon's longstanding success. Beyond that, innovation labs invest in a company's culture, processes, supply chain and noncustomer aspects of the business.

I recently asked Retail Online Integration's (ROI) stellar editorial advisory board for 100 words or less on an omnichannel retail trend they believe will have a big impact on businesses this year. As expected, I got some great responses back. What follows are the board members’ insights into what your business should be focusing on in the New Year:

Retail Online Integration's fifth annual list of the leading women executives in omnichannel retail features some of the brightest minds in the industry. This year's nominees were chosen for being in a top-level position within an omnichannel retail organization, along with several other criteria, including their scope of responsibility, achievements within their own companies, and their involvement within the retail industry. Take advantage of this opportunity to learn about the career paths of some of today's leading retail experts, as well as find out what they believe will be the top tip for omnichannel retail success in 2015.

Security isn't always about investing in the most expensive solutions. Rather, it's about adopting strong security policies and integrating them into day-to-day activities. Consider Target's case. It had a proper compliance validation assessment with PCI Security and spent $1.6 million on a malware detection system, yet overlooked warnings about intrusion. This shows that investing a fortune on sophisticated IT security systems and obtaining compliance certificates doesn't guarantee that all data is heavily protected by default. With the amount of information obtained by organizations constantly changing and growing, a single malicious, unnoticed modification may lead to a data leak. So what can retailers do to prevent data breaches?

Neiman Marcus and Capital One have created a mobile wallet for the luxury retailer's credit card customers who use Apple iPhones. Customers can make in-store purchases without carrying a plastic credit card. NM Mobile Wallet will work with Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman and customer cards from Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover. Neiman Marcus chose its own route vs. accepting Apple Pay. The NM Mobile wallet app actually works on more versions of the iPhone than Apple Pay, which only works on its newest iPhone 6. NM Mobile Wallet requires that phones operate with at least version iOS 7.

Department store chain Belk took a previously successful TV holiday campaign and modernized it for the omnichannel era, with impressive results. "In January 2014, we started to look at how to improve our fourth-quarter performance and engage with the customer," said Jon Pollack, Belk's executive vice president of sales, promotions, marketing and e-commerce. "The idea was born to revive ‘Santa Baby,’ a campaign from 2009, and modernize it to drive sales, engagement and interaction."