Omnichannel

Alex Miller, senior vice president of digital and e-commerce for QVC, shares how the company is expanding its digital efforts.

The term is thrown about at random, but what does it really mean for a retail organization to be "omnichannel," both from the perspective of consumers as well as the retailer itself? In a session yesterday at the eTail East conference in Philadelphia, a panel of retailers — Jessica Coogan, online marketing director, The Container Store; Brian Witherow, director of customer loyalty, Lovesac; Cricket Whitton, director of marketing and e-commerce, Design Within Reach; and Sara Onken, digital marketing consultant, Steelcase — attempted to answer that question.

While jingle bells and hot toddies may be the last thing on your mind this summer, the fact remains that the holiday shopping season is quickly approaching. And, like 2013, it's a shorter period than most years. There are 26 days between Black Friday and Christmas this year, compared to 25 last year. For comparison, there were 31 days in 2012. The short holiday selling season spelled trouble for many unprepared retailers last year, with downed websites, out-of-stocks and late deliveries fueling customers’ anger.

Deliv CEO Daphne Carmeli calls the startup she founded two-and-a-half years ago a disrupter for the retail world, and as CEO she's entitled to boast. But Carmeli isn't that far off in her description of a service that, with a few tweaks and twists, can be likened to a far more famous disrupter — rideshare services Uber and Lyft. Deliv is a crowdsourced delivery service used by retailers like Williams-Sonoma and a growing number of malls owned by such companies as General Growth Properties and Simon Property Group. 

Want to know more about beacon technology, including how it works and how it’s changing the future of mobile shopping?

A look at how retailers connect with their customers digitally to create a seamless online and offline brand experience.

In this webinar, executives discuss the key challenges omnichannel retail marketers faced heading into the 2014 holiday season.

Sears and Kmart, two leading integrated retailers focused on making shopping easier for Shop Your Way members and customers, are introducing a unique online/in-store collaboration to allow pick up of sears.com or kmart.com orders at any of each other's stores, more than 2,000 locations nationwide ready in five minutes or less.

Retailers have barely reached the halfway mark in their journey to omnichannel maturity, according to the results of a new report from Starmount and Retail Systems Research (RSR). The report is based on survey results from a wide range of retailers that rated themselves on six dimensions of omnichannel maturity:  customer, product, inventory, order/fulfillment, locus and technology. Key findings from the study include the following:

The connected home space is getting crowded with Staples Connect, the newest platform looking to simplify peoples’ lives by putting them in constant contact with their home or business. Staples plans to roll out its Staples Connect home automation platform to 500 stores and will offer lower prices on the Connect Hub and feature new wearable products and support from some big technology names. Staples Connect was introduced in the fall of 2013 in select stores and online as a home and office automation platform, competing with Google's Nest, Lowe's Iris system and Home Depot's new Wink platform.