Staples

The opening of Postal Service retail centers in dozens of Staples stores around the country is being met with threats of protests and boycotts by the agency's unions. The new outlets are staffed by Staples employees, not postal workers, and labor officials say that move replaces good-paying union jobs with low-wage, nonunion workers. "It's a direct assault on our jobs and on public postal services," said Mark Dimondstein, president of the 200,000-member American Postal Workers Union.

After 10 years, Staples is dropping its once ubiquitous "That Was Easy" slogan as part of a new advertising campaign aimed at redefining the company for the digital age. Traditionally associated with its brick-and-mortar office supplies stores, Staples’ in-store sales have suffered in recent years as core products like notebooks, printers and, yes, staples, have gone out of fashion as modern schools and workplaces have shifted their communications online.

Plenty of retailers have leveraged user-generated content (e.g., customer photos and videos) from contests and promotions in branded marketing campaigns before, but not quite like Sears just did. The company's Startup + Developer Challenge, held this past summer, was a "code-a-thon" designed to find the best and brightest minds in the tech community of Silicon Valley — and then use those minds to Sears' benefit.

Both Black Friday and Cyber Monday are extremely important for any online retailer. It can make or break your year, so it's essential to get ready to attract both new and previous customers to choose your store over your competitors. We're sure you've been preparing for the holiday rush, but some double-checking can never hurt. Although there's less than a week until Cyber Monday, you still have some time left to ensure that you get the most out of the largest online celebration this year. Let's go through the checklist to make sure you're ready.

If Teen Vogue's Back to School Saturday wasn't proof of how successful a multichannel, multitactic back-to-school campaign can be, I don't know what was. That campaign integrated original Teen Vogue content with offers from leading brands and retailers, and brought it all together with a live, teen-focused event. Videos circulated online for months after the August extravaganza.

Staples bought e-commerce software startup Runa, looking to use the San Mateo, Calif., company's offerings to personalize its online store. "With Runa, we're adding technology to better serve our customers with personalized items, offers and delivery estimates, all in real time," said Staples Chief Executive Ronald Sargent. "Runa will allow us to tap into the wealth of engineering and e-commerce expertise in the Silicon Valley area."

Just recently, Staples and RadioShack removed Amazon.com lockers from their stores. Bloomberg Businessweek reports on how, contrary to popular belief, Amazon lockers are a good addition to retail storefronts. "Amazon has the lockers in nine large metro areas and touts the delivery option as a customer convenience for the many people who can't reliably get…

Staples and RadioShack have removed Amazon.com's temporary storage lockers from their brick-and-mortar stores, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. The stores added the lockers last year but have decided that housing a competitor's storage units wasn't a good idea. The lockers allowed Amazon customers to have their purchases delivered to a secure location that they could visit at their convenience. The units are meant to give Amazon an opportunity to compete with brands like Best Buy and Wal-Mart, which offer in-store pick up for their online customers. 

In the final part of this two-part series on the “20-Plus Things to Watch in Retail” section of JWT’s Retail Rebooted report, I discuss

I came across an interesting report last week from marketing communications firm JWT called Retail Rebooted. The report focuses on key trends taking place within the retail industry today. I was most interested in the report’s "20-Plus Things to Watch in Retail" section, which offers a relatively quick rundown of developments in retail, from innovative business models to shifting consumer behaviors to the latest technology launches. In today’s blog post (part one of a two-part series), I’ll recap 10 of these 20-plus things, such as 3-D printing, alternative brand currencies, and click-and-collect shopping.