Shipping
August 24, 2015 at 11:25 am
In my observation, the vast majority of volume parcel shippers have tried to mitigate the impact of the 2015 dimensional pricing changes through a number of strategies. They include the following: carrier contract negotiations; diverting freight to regional carriers and the U.S. Postal Service that might offer higher DIM divisors and thresholds than the national…
August 21, 2015 at 12:53 pm
The last mile (i.e., package delivery to the customer's doorstep) is a major challenge for cross-border e-commerce merchants. Most often, retailers must rely on shipping providers or the local postal service to cover this very important segment of their supply chain. Doing so can involve huge risks if the provider doesn’t fit with the merchant’s…
August 20, 2015 at 2:56 pm
Online sellers who rely on the USPS to get their orders into the hands of customers may be concerned about a new report from the US Postal Service Office of Inspector General over delivery delays. Yet at the same time, there are reports the Postal Service is focusing its efforts on Same Day delivery. The…
August 13, 2015 at 1:41 pm
Target Corp. plans to begin testing a grocery-delivery service soon as retail rivals stake out space in bringing food to customers' doorsteps. The Minneapolis-based retailer isn't offering many details about the effort, though the Star Tribune quotes Chief Marketing Officer Jeff Jones as saying a trial of the service will be offered "in the very…
August 11, 2015 at 1:13 pm
The parent company of Columbia House, the once-popular mail-order music club, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after 20 years of declining sales. Filmed Entertainment Inc. said Monday it would sell its Columbia House DVD Club business through an open auction. Though once big in the CD business, the company left the music industry…
August 7, 2015 at 4:13 pm
Sephora is testing out a new monthly beauty box subscription called "Play! By Sephora" in select markets, WWD reports. It's a $10-a-month box loaded with Sephora samples and extras including Spotify playlists, as well as "Play! Pass" coupons for in-store activations like one-on-one tutorials for the products in that month’s box. This sounds like a…
August 3, 2015 at 2:13 pm
Amazon.com has placed new restrictions on how many users can access a Prime account and is excluding businesses from the program. People pay $99 for Amazon Prime membership, and until this month, were allowed to share their account with four other members. A new provision called "Amazon Households" restricts members to sharing the program with up…
July 29, 2015 at 2:59 pm
Amazon.com wants to carve out a special zone of the sky to shuttle commercial drones that would deliver goods to its customers. Amazon Prime Air project vice president Gur Kimchi used a NASA convention in California on Tuesday to fly the idea of dedicating separate air zones for commercial drones. Kimchi proposed setting commercial drone zones between…
July 28, 2015 at 3:47 pm
Following its split from PayPal last week, eBay announced it’s closing down a number of standalone mobile applications, including eBay Valet, eBay Fashion and eBay Motors, and is retiring its on-demand delivery service eBay Now. On the latter item, the company says that eBay Now was “always intended” as a pilot program, and while it…
July 22, 2015 at 2:43 pm
Macy's is expanding same-day delivery to several new U.S. markets this summer, one of the most aggressive pushes by a brick-and-mortar retailer in an area dominated by e-commerce giant Amazon.com, according to a Macy's official. Macy's, the nation's largest department store chain, already offers same-day delivery services in eight markets. By partnering with Deliv, an…
