Omnichannel

Wal-Mart's global e-commerce unit intends to hire hundreds of tech workers in a big expansion of its operations in Sunnyvale, Calif. "We're planning to expand to about 1,000 employees in Sunnyvale," said Bao Nguyen, a spokesman with Wal-Mart global e-commerce, whose operations are headquartered in San Bruno, Calif. At present, the e-commerce unit has about 550 employees in Sunnyvale.

As a retail consultant for the past three decades, I'm continually called upon to provide answers. Retailers want to know what the "best practices" are, and how to "fix" their business. At a minimum, clients expect a consultant to be able to provide analysis and intelligence to make them more profitable. The more I study failures in retail, the more I find that they simply didn't ask the right questions. They were solving for the wrong thing. The Chicago Tribune recently posted 100 great questions discovered through experience by top business leaders. 

"Amazon.com is nipping at the heels of every retailer," said Lauren Freedman, president, the e-tailing group, a Chicago-based consultancy, in the company's 13th annual Merchant Survey, which was released yesterday. "Mobile has materialized as a revenue-producing force and customer expectations have peaked, once again altering retailer investment strategies. Choice and prioritization are paramount in the context of this chaotic environment for survival and growth."

We're excited to bring you our list of the 100 fastest-growing omnichannel retailers for the 2013 fiscal year. To compile this year's list, we researched 2013 fiscal year net sales figures for all the public retail companies in the U.S. and Canada. We then compared those numbers to the previous fiscal year's net sales. After we calculated the percentage change year-over-year, we ranked each company in descending order to arrive at our top 100. We've also included select profiles that highlight specific companies on the list. Enjoy!


For retailers, the mobile-wielding millennial shopper can be viewed with worry and despair, or as an opportunity to improve in-store engagement and conversions through mobile merchandising. Activating a mobile merchandising strategy to connect with smartphone-equipped shoppers can actually encourage them to interact within your retail environment via their smartphones. Enabling mobile consumers is a lot more productive in driving in-store conversions than ignoring this shift in consumer behavior. Here are three insights for retailers to improve in-store conversions using mobile merchandising:

Bed Bath & Beyond continues to make substantial capital investments in its online, mobile and social media channels to enhance customers’ overall experience with the brand. CapEx spending for 2014 is planned to be $350 million, including new functionality to selling websites, a new and more robust point-of-sale system, and equipping the new IT data center to name a few. "Looking back on 2013, we've made considerable progress in many areas," commented Bed Bath & Beyond CEO Steven Temares. 

Target is vastly expanding the goods available to order by subscription as it fends off its biggest nontraditional retail rival, Amazon.com. The nation's second-largest discounter first dabbled with subscriptions last September, trying to win over haggard parents by making available 150 baby care products. Target expanded that program more than tenfold this week to nearly 1,600 items across a much wider array of products. Everything from beauty products and pet supplies to home office supplies are now available for regular delivery.

Owning the shopping experience of the future is how Gap Chairman and CEO Glenn Murphy described the motivation behind a wide range of omnichannel strategies he and other senior executives shared during an annual meeting with investors. Murphy and Gap's top division heads provided an overview of strategic initiatives designed to achieve long-term, profitable growth across its portfolio of brands and also highlighted how the company plans to use technology, innovation and scale as competitive advantages as it looks to deliver a world-class omnichannel experience. 

For all the talk about showrooming and Jeff Bezos mercilessly pursuing world domination, e-commerce remains a fraction of the size of the good ole' brick-and-mortar industry. But times are changing. Physical retail in the U.S. deals in trillions of dollars, while e-commerce dabbles in mere hundreds of billions. Americans are expected to spend $304.1 billion and $4.1 trillion on e-commerce and physical retail, respectively, in 2014. By 2017, those figures are expected to increase to $440.4 billion and nearly $4.9 trillion, according to eMarketer.

CNBC's Courtney Reagan speaks with Terry Lundgren, Macy's president and CEO, about the future of malls and competition in the retail sector. Lundgren also addresses the promotion of Jeff Gannett.