New York City’s department store landscape has long been defined by one letter: B. That B stands for Bloomingdale’s, Bergdorf Goodman, the recently shuttered Henri Bendel and, of course, Barneys New York. Now, the latter of those famous Bs is in trouble. Barneys New York, grappling with evolving customer tastes and high rents, is weighing…
Ecommerce conglomerate Alibaba is pitching itself to U.S. small businesses as a new marketplace to buy and sell to businesses around the world. According to Alibaba, its new tools, which are available today, can help the nearly 30 million small- and medium-sized businesses, or SMBs, in the U.S.–manufacturers, wholesalers and distributors, in particular–sell their wares…
Amazon certainly isn’t the first brand to experiment with 3D body scans, but it may be the first to really give consumers the willies. In May, Amazon made headlines for offering $25 gift cards in exchange for the scans, which raised concerns about not only its intent but potential breaches and/or exploitation. “If Amazon were…
Three weeks after it became persona non grata on the internet, Wayfair, the home goods retailer linked to children in cages, is quietly having a Black Friday in July sale kicking off today. Just nine days ago, a Wayfair spokesperson said the company had no plans for additional summertime discounts, unlike the 300 retailers piggybacking…
Zappos, the company that made free shipping and returns the norm in ecommerce, is turning 20. To celebrate, Zappos is unrolling a series of marketing initiatives to bring old and new customers into the fold. To start with, the company is reverting its website to its original 1999 look on July 19 for one day…
An EU antitrust investigation and U.S. lawmakers calling on the Department of Labor to look into workplace safety are probably not the headlines Amazon was hoping for the morning after its longest-ever Prime Day. Nevertheless, the ecommerce platform was at the ready with a press release lauding the 48-hour sale as “the largest shopping event…
The European Commission has opened an antitrust investigation into whether Amazon is using data from independent sellers on its platform for competitive advantage. A press release from the Commission pointed to Amazon’s dual–and perhaps conflicting–roles as a retailer of products and as a marketplace where other merchants also sell goods. “When providing a marketplace for…
We’re past the halfway point of Amazon’s first-ever 48-hour Prime Day and Amazon is already boasting how discounts have saved Prime members “hundreds of millions of dollars in the U.S.” Meanwhile, the company says customers around the world have purchased millions of Alexa-enabled devices, along with Instant Pots, water filters and Crest 3D White Professional…
Bulletin, a retail startup with three shops in New York, has raised a $7 million Series A from Foundation Capital, with additional support from Kleiner Perkins, Trail Mix Ventures and Afore Capital. It’s the company’s second round of funding, having raised a seed round of $2.2 million in 2017. The company plans on expanding its…
As Amazon readies for what will likely be two of its busiest days of the year, the pilots who transport its cargo are releasing a digital ad campaign on Facebook to highlight “concerns about how they are being overworked, underpaid and disrespected by their carriers.” It’s the latest move in an increasingly bitter logistics saga…
If ecommerce platform Amazon was a hero from ancient Greece, it might be Achilles, the demigod warrior who appeared unbeatable on the battlefields of Troy. As anyone familiar with the origin of “Achilles heel” knows, his well meaning mother hoped to save him from his fate, which was to die in the Trojan War, by…
Believe it or not, Amazon did not create the mid-summer sale with Prime Day. Instead, it took a pre-existing concept, rebranded it, and now, according to figures from savings site RetailMeNot, as many as 250 other retailers are following suit. Each retailer, of course, adds its own spin–staring a day earlier, ending a day later,…
Alibaba may have cut Amazon’s Taylor Swift victory lap short, announcing plans to take its Singles Day countdown gala global this year on 10 cable networks in China, Southeast Asia, Africa and North America. To be fair, the Prime Day concert was streamable in 200 countries, but Alibaba’s timing at the very least is interesting–and…
While a record 40 million people have tuned in to watch the third season of Stranger Things since last week’s debut, a smaller but impressive subset of the sci-fi thriller’s fans have been busy playing an alternate reality game based on the show’s themes of Russian espionage. The game, Operation Scoop Snoop, began last week…
Stuck in the mud, somewhere in the swamps of the New Jersey Meadowlands lies the American Dream. Or so we’ve been told for the last 16 years. What has been an albatross around the necks of several NJ gubernatorial administrations, the 3-million-square-foot mall by Triple Five Group in East Rutherford, N.J, is finally set to…
Nothing Lady Gaga does is conventional, and that now includes launching her new beauty brand exclusively on Amazon. In a move that shocked the beauty retail industry, Lady Gaga’s upcoming beauty line Haus Laboratories will be available on Amazon in nine countries starting in September. The launch has the potential to change brands’ perception of…
Unbox, the first brand out of dtx, the company founded by former Oath CEO Tim Armstrong to invest in direct-to-consumer brands, is officially here, offering brands a new type of marketing experience. With Unbox, codes and tags across all types of marketing channels from digital to catalogs will let consumers quickly scan the code and…
Instead of simply disrupting a category, direct-to-consumer brands are expanding into changing up entire industries. Two telemedicine direct-to-consumer brands–Ro and Keeps–started the first wave by offering men a different way to get a doctor’s consultation on uncomfortable health issues. Now, Quip, a DTC toothbrush company that’s sold in Target and Walmart, is rolling out two…
Welcome to a world of dazzling colors–and delicious pastries. LG Electronics USA and the Pantone Color Institute are collaborating for a new pop-up, Caf? OLED by LG, this weekend in New York. The electronics company and the color institute will “marry” the spectacle of Pantone colors on an LG OLED TV to support the powerful…
In an industry rife with false advertising, loose FTC guidelines and influencers peddling products that maybe even they don’t believe in, Seed, a direct-to-consumer probiotics brand, wants to change how influencers work with companies. Seed rolled out its affiliate program, Seed University, on June 25. The idea behind Seed University, which exists solely on Instagram,…
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