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U.K. Grocer Turns Warehouse Management Dashboard Into A Video Game?

Flashy customer-facing technology is fine, but it’s nice to see a retailer giving employees something shiny to look at, too. U.K. online grocer Ocado is now using what looks like a 3D animated video...

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Put To The Test, U.K. Retailers Suffer Merged-Channel Hiccups

Buy-online-pick-up-in-store—along with its opposite cousin—is arguably the most popular merged-channel element. But it's also the most complex, with the greatest number of potential points of failure....

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Amazon Lockers: When Urban Dwellers Find Home Delivery Really Inconvenient

Amazon has been expanding its network of Amazon Lockers—relatively secure holding areas for Amazon packages in the middle of stores—in the U.S. since last year. They were initially limited to New York,...

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Amazon’s Latest Pricing Glitch: What Will It Take For Third-Party Controls To...

On Tuesday (July 17), a wide range of third-party products on Amazon showed special pricing: one cent. The pricing glitch was, yet again, caused by some third-party integration and a coding error. How...

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Amazon Same-Day Delivery? Stores Not The Target

This week saw a wide range of media reports stating that Amazon, thanks to its recent state tax deals, may offer shoppers same-day delivery and that this, as one Slate headline said, "will destroy...

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JCPenney CEO: E-Commerce Is Going To Hit A Ceiling

JCPenney CEO Ron Johnson believes E-Commerce is a toothless threat to stores. On July 18 Johnson told a conference audience he thinks that E-Commerce is like the catalog craze of the 1980s—its share of...

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Even Cutting-Edge IT Couldn’t Save Burlington Coat Factory From $1.5 Million...

For decades, Burlington Coat Factory has been one of the most cutting-edge retail IT shops anywhere by being first—or close to first—in its deployments of Unix, Oracle, the Web, E-mail, TCP/IP,...

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To Survive, Retailers Need To Kill The IT Budget And Burn The Boats

If a retailer really wants to compete with Amazon and the changing realities of today's retail environment, it needs to kill the IT budget, disband the IT Steering Committee and throw away the IT...

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Finish Line’s Mobile Checkout: Practical Vs. Potential

By November, the 654-store Finish Line sportswear chain will become the first major retailer to have mobile checkout in every one of its stores, just in time for the holidays. But while piloting the...

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Monthlies And A Shout-Out To Kindle Users

A little late October housecleaning here at StorefrontBacktalk. First, a quick reminder: StorefrontBacktalk now has five free Monthly newsletters, each one focusing on a different key area for you:...

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Study: 29 Percent Of Online SKUs Accidentally Leave Off Manufacturer Name

In an October sampling of some 7,000 products shown on the 10 largest E-Commerce sites in North America and the U.K., 29 percent of the SKUs did not include the manufacturer’s name and some 8 percent...

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Amazon: Same-Day Delivers More Conversions, Few Actual Users

With all the attention recently being paid to same-day deliveries by retailers including eBay, Walmart, Macy's, Nordstrom and tons of others, here's an interesting stat—and a delicious...

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StorefrontBacktalk‘s Next Chapter

As the founder of StorefrontBacktalk, I am thrilled to announce today that StorefrontBacktalk is now a member of the FierceMarkets family of B2B publications. FierceMarkets is a wholly owned subsidiary...

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British Retailers Subsidizing Same-Day Delivery More Than 40 Percent

As retailers are still trying to work through their new-found infatuation with the idea of same-day deliveries, it's quickly becoming a love-hate relationship. Beyond Amazon's discovery that shoppers...

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The Inventory Nightmare: When Shoes Show Up Where They’re Not Wanted

Put this one under the "no good retail deed ever goes unpunished" category. When chains listen to their customers and create localized store inventory, and then they listen more and accept online...

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What Happens When A Merged-Channel Supply Chain Undermines Itself

Retailers have discovered that, although the benefits of a truly merged-channel supply chain are vast, the pain-points are potentially even more vast—at least in the beginning. Michelle Tinsley, the...

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Fake Prices At JCPenney? Why Not Real (But Rigged) Price Comparisons?

Who actually believes in MSRP, anyway? On January 24, the New York Post breathlessly reported that JCPenney was asking (or maybe just planning to ask) suppliers for a "fake" list price, even if they...

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JCPenney’s RFID Reversal Guts In-Aisle Checkout

When JCPenney very publicly and very aggressively embraced a chain-wide, all-product item-level RFID strategy—with the promise of a full rollout by February 1 (2013)—executives cited supply-chain...

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British Department Store Allowing Online Shoe Returns At Gas Stations

John Lewis, the huge British department store Everything photo it readbreatheread.com robaxin canada Bonilla before kind still viagra order online have clean creme But. Turned...

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Germany Wants Amazon To Loosen Its Third-Party Seller Restrictions

German anti-trust officials are investigating the non-price-compete contract clauses at Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), which require third-party sellers to not sell anywhere else for less. If the agency finds...

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Macy’s Stops Reporting Online Stats, Blames Too Much Channel Blur

Arguing that "the line between stores and the Internet is blurring so much," Macy's (NYSE:M) has become the first major publicly held retailer to stop reporting its E-Commerce stats. Setting aside the...

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Is Target Trying To Become Amazon For Cooks?

Target (NYSE:TGT) is quietly getting into the E-Commerce infrastructure business. The $68 billion chain announced last Thursday (March 14) that it is buying online cookery sites CHEFS Catalog and...

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NeimanMarcus.com’s Fake Faux-Fur Fiasco Draws A Real 20-Year Consent Agreement

In what is probably a sign of the real-vs.-fake end times, Neiman Marcus agreed on Tuesday (March 19) to stop labeling real fur as "faux fur." According to a very real FTC complaint, between October...

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With Starbucks’ Grocery CRM Plan, It Had To Get Clever About Fraud

When Starbucks (NASDAQ:SBUX) announced Wednesday (March 20) it would spread its CRM program to grocery stores that sell its bagged coffee, it wasn't merely an industry first. It was Starbucks' attempt...

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Care About Issues Beyond IT?

One of the results of StorefrontBacktalk‘s being acquired back in December is that we are going to be expanding into coverage that goes beyond Retail IT into other areas of retail. The first example of...

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Why One Chain Is Insisting That Same-Day Delivery Orders Can Be Placed Only...

When 53-store regional chain Sports Chalet decided to join many of its big-chain counterparts in offering same-day delivery, it decided to base both its pricing and its promised delivery time on...

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Gap’s Take On Typical Buy-Online-Pickup-In-Store Programs: Too Efficient

When Gap looked at buy-online-pickup-in-store programs, the president of Gap digital saw the programs that others chains have as very efficient. Indeed, far too efficient. It allowed the shopper to...

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Amazon’s Five-Mile Threat

Amazon will open eight new U.S. distribution centers between now and the holiday selling season, bringing the total to 54—with almost as many DCs outside the U.S., according to the CEO of e-commerce...

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What You’re Missing: Urban Outfitters Charging More Online, Does Sears Want...

Your friends here at StorefrontBacktalk editorial also now publish a daily retail site, called FierceRetail, and wanted to give you a sense of what you’re missing by not visiting or grabbing its free...

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Target Quietly Running Four Fulfillment Trials, But The Reason Why Is Far...

Target CFO John Mulligan has confirmed that Target is in the middle of not one but four different fulfillment pilots, including acting as a guinea pig for the same-day-delivery trials of both Google...

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Amazon’s Supply Chain Kicking The SKUs Out Of Walmart’s

After some 19 years of struggling with E-Commerce, Walmart is once again learning that managing a merged channel retail strategy is almost never going to beat a well-run pure-play e-tailer like Amazon...

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Extremely Sad News

It pains us greatly to have to report to you that our PCI Columnist, Walt Conway, passed away on Tuesday (June 26) after a battle with pancreatic cancer. Professionally, Walt had that rare ability to...

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Books-A-Million Will Test A Giant In-Store Book-Making Machine

After years of trying to convince major bookstore chains that printing single copies of books onsite is viable, one print-on-demand vendor has finally gotten a nibble. The 253-store Books-A-Million...

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How To Deal With Merged Channel Inventory?

As merged channels (also known as omnichannel) become the default for an increasing number of retailers, the challenge of efficiently handling the supply chain and managing inventory becomes...

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Will Warranty Enforcement Be Amazon Marketplace’s Achilles’ Heel?

When it comes to competing against Amazon, eBay or even Japan's Rakuten, one of the more challenging aspects is their third-party marketplaces, which give each a seemingly endless inventory at minimal...

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