Retail Stores

Apple is reportedly looking to overhaul its iPhone retail strategy in a bid to boost sales to maintain a strong position in the handset market in the face of increasing competition from Google's rival Android platform. The news comes from 9to5Mac, which says Apple boss Tim Cook, together with executives Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi, held a secret summit with Apple retail store leaders from around the world. According to the Apple news site's multiple sources, the meeting was held at Fort Mason in San Francisco on June 27.

Historically, the payments ecosystem has been disjointed and time intensive, creating tremendous operational inefficiencies. With so much riding on payment performance, merchants are seeking simpler, streamlined payments solutions that can accommodate geographic growth and new demands to adapt quickly and seamlessly to the constantly evolving retail landscape.

Teen apparel retailer Aeropostale will enter Mexico through a licensing agreement with Distribuidora Liverpool, S.A. de C.V. ("Liverpool"). The agreement includes the opening of branded Aeropostale shop-in-shops in Liverpool department stores across Mexico beginning this summer, in addition to rolling out freestanding stores. The first stand-alone store is scheduled to open this summer in Mexico City's Sante Fe Mall. "We are thrilled to bring the Aeropostale brand to Mexico through both branded shops and stand-alone stores," said Thomas P. Johnson, Aeropostale's CEO.

There was a lot of head scratching in Silicon Valley last Wednesday over a $6.3 million investment in Brit + Co., a shopping and crafts site whose traffic has been estimated at around 50,000 unique visitors a month, with the company saying it does somewhere north of 500,000 monthly uniques — both very modest numbers. That had people wondering if investors like Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer backed Brit + Co. because proprietor Brit Morin is married to Path CEO Dave Morin and the recipient of relentlessly glowing media coverage.

As a retailer, you know you have to capture prospects’ attention to make a sale. That's why advertisements use eye-catching graphics. But now more than ever, consumers tend to ignore traditional ads and focus instead on the screen in the palm of their hand. An advertising strategy that leverages this tendency is likely to deliver dividends in increased sales, and a truly forward-thinking approach can produce other valuable benefits for both the customer and the retailer.

Google's BigQuery service allows users to run near-instantaneous queries in massive data sets with billions of entries. The service, which is similar to Hadoop, is often partnered with commercial software packages for deep analytics used in business plans. One of these partners, Tableau, just gave details on a project that helped retailers adjust their business models for huge snowstorms. Tableau and marketing firm Interactions discovered something interesting at the study's end: Store profits were impacted by the threat of a storm just as much as an actual snowstorm.

The time is now for retailers to meet the expectations of customers by connecting the in-store shopping experience with omnichannel capabilities. Today's digitally-empowered customers expect quick, convenient, omnichannel experiences no matter what channel they decide to shop - online, via mobile or in-store. If anything is certain, it is that customers expect store associates to have information at their fingertips, which is why many retailers are launching mobile devices in stores. Retail is facing a revolution, including new store designs, mobile technology and the use of real-time data.

Norwood, Mass., and Dover, Del., are home to two next generation Staples stores reflective of the company's latest thinking when it comes to serving shoppers in a digital world. The stores feature several new Staples.com kiosks with large screens to provide customers with access to an expanded assortment consistent with the company's goal of providing "every" product a business needs to succeed.

With the onset of internet shopping and the subsequent pressure on physical stores to compete, the retail industry has seen a number of long-term trends emerge from this dichotomy. One trend that's more hotly contested and trailblazing than others is the power of brands, and the pressure these brands are putting on retail developers to ensure that their interests are being represented. 

The retail industry has seen a lot of change over the past five years. Amid a massive downturn in consumer spending and a growing e-commerce sector, some in the technology industry have forecast the complete collapse of brick-and-mortar retail. However, offline commerce still accounts for over 90 percent of consumer spending, and an explosion of new technologies seek to bring e-commerce tools to the local shopping experience. Retailers account for a large chunk of advertising spending in the U.S., so ad agencies are keeping a close eye on these developments.