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...
View ArticlePut 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....
View ArticleAmazon 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,...
View ArticleAmazon’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...
View ArticleAmazon 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...
View ArticleJCPenney 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...
View ArticleEven 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,...
View ArticleTo 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...
View ArticleFinish 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...
View ArticleMonthlies 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:...
View ArticleStudy: 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...
View ArticleAmazon: 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...
View ArticleStorefrontBacktalk‘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...
View ArticleBritish 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...
View ArticleThe 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...
View ArticleWhat 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...
View ArticleFake 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...
View ArticleJCPenney’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...
View ArticleBritish 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...
View ArticleGermany 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...
View Article
