2007 February

U.S. Retail Is Booming By now everyone knows that retailers had a great holiday season in 2006. The US Census Bureau reports that U.S. retail ecommerce sales (excluding travel) were the highest in four years during Q4 2006. The figures below exclude travel and are preliminary for 2006. U.S. Retail Ecommerce by Quarter, Q4 2000-Q4 2006 (billions & % of total retail sales)   Retail Ecommerce % of Total Retail …

Shoe Dreams and Fantasies Every woman loves shoes. Some collect them and even fantasize about them. Freudian analysis of dreams ascribed a dream of red shoes associated with Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tale, The Red Shoes, to neurotic conflicts. No, today’s women are not neurotic; however, many are addicted to shoes. Everybody has a story about their favorite pair of shoes. For some women, shoes are the stuff of dreams …

Dollar Stores Hot Sector in Retailing Dollar stores are one of the hottest high-growth sectors in retailing. This sector includes the one-price general merchandise stores and closeout stores and is responsible for sustaining the current momentum in retail sales. Dollar stores have posted some of the highest growth rates across retiling in recent years, largely due to rapid expansion, solid sales gains and increasing consumer interest in this type sales …

New Contextual Ad Platform Gives Retailers Better Content Monetization Coming up soon: a contextual ad platform from FAST that allows retailers to monetize content and serve advertisers without using third-party services. Enterprise search firm FAST announced the launch of AdMomentum, a platform that allows publishers to manage and serve their own ads bypassing Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and other third-party contextual advertising networks. FAST believes this service can be a “revenue …

New Technology Helps You Save on Shipping Rates E-shipper, an online shipping and logistical services company, uses new online shipping technology that can save companies up to 50 percent on day-to-day shipping costs. You can save on all modes of transport and logistics such as courier, airfreight, trucking, warehousing and pick and pack services. How can they do this? By forging long term (wholesale) relationships and partnerships with all the …