Industry News - March 6th, 2009
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RETAIL AND TECHNOLOGY NEWS |
Dress Barn Adds New E-Commerce Platform
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Dress Barn adds e-commerce technology, fulfillment and design services
from GSI Commerce. GSI will launch the first Dress Barn, online store
for the maurices brand this fall.
"GSI has a terrific reputation in the industry for providing leading
e-commerce services to large, national retailers," said David R. Jaffe,
president and CEO of Dress Barn. "After conducting an extensive
evaluation of solution providers, we chose GSI based on its leadership
position, robust, stable platform and proven experience working with
retailers. We look forward to launching the maurices online store later
this year."
GSI, through its digital agency gsi interactive, conducted a thorough
assessment of maurices' retail operations to better understand their
customers and provide strategic guidance on what the user experience
could be. "We were impressed with the upfront consultation and
recommendations that GSI provided during our selection process," says
Lisa Rhodes, EVP and CMO for maurices. "Together, we discussed a range
of options that would help Dress Barn, Inc. meet its e-commerce goals."
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eBay’s ProStores Add PowerReviews
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eBay's ProStores select PowerReviews to provide online customer
reviews. Key benefits of the PowerReviews/ProStores relationship for
ProStores retailers include:
-Easy Integration - PowerReviews Express is integrated into the
ProStores platform, which helps retailers launch online product reviews
within hours.
-Enhanced Review Collection - Working with PowerReviews, ProStores
merchants can choose to populate their store with customer reviews,
through automated post-purchase e-mails from integrated ProStores
partner IMN.
-A nearly 20 percent discount on PowerReviews Express post-free trial ($15 off the standard $80 per month fee).
-A free 30-day trial of PowerReviews Express.
"Our customers have been requesting a customer reviews feature for a
while now, as reviews are becoming a key part of effective
merchandising and customer service," said Angela Troy, general manager,
ProStores. "PowerReviews Express, with its big-company solution
tailored to small and medium-sized company needs, enables us to offer
our customers the best solution without significant effort or expense."
PowerReviews Express offers:
-Review Snapshot - an at-a-glance review summary that streamlines the research process for consumers
-Verified Buyer - a feature that builds consumer confidence with more credible reviews
-Affinity Views - the ability for consumers to find reviews from people just like them.
-Content Moderation Services (for the merchant) - Each review is read
by a PowerReviews moderator and screened for inflammatory and
non-product-related content, saving the merchant significant time while
leaving full control in their hands for which reviews are displayed on
their site.
Several early adopters from ProStores, such as PeppyParents.com,
Essential Wonders, and Blue Marble Lighting, have already added the
PowerReviews Express solution, inspired by both the potential of
boosting their online businesses and increasing customer satisfaction.
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Peapod Implements PCI Compliance and Change Control
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Peapod implements Tripwire Enterprise, a file integrity monitoring
solution from Tripwire, to help it meet its Payment Card Industry Data
Security Standard (PCI DSS) goals, as well as to help it manage change
control with its mission critical systems.
Peapod, which operates online grocery shopping and delivery service for
Giant Food and Stop and Shop supermarkets in more than 22 metropolitan
areas in the United States, has delivered over 13 million orders. For
Peapod, ensuring continuous regulatory compliance supports an overall
mandate to keep customer data secure and to maintain the trust that
customers have placed for many years in the Peapod e-commerce platform.
In addition to providing the change audit and configuration assessment
capabilities required by the PCI standard, Peapod uses Tripwire
Enterprise to save system administration time and view all system
modifications from its central console without having to access each
server individually. This central view allows Peapod to enforce its
change control processes by monitoring its systems for unauthorized
changes, investigating exceptions to its policy. Most importantly,
Tripwire offers Peapod reports that its executives and auditors need
for documenting IT change history and demonstrating compliance.
"Tripwire Enterprise offers a powerful solution for helping us with PCI
compliance, track changes throughout the enterprise, detect exceptions
to our policies, and be able to quickly remediate any problems that
could disrupt security and system availability," says Todd Vazquez,
senior UNIX administrator, Peapod. "Because Tripwire delivered, we can
keep delivering our customers' groceries, knowing that we are keeping
our processes, systems and customers' data safe."
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Wal-Mart Canada Discontinues Sam's Club, Expands Supercentres
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Wal-Mart Canada has announced it will
discontinue its Sam's Club format in March to focus on its expanding
Supercentre format and discount store business. The announcement will
affect the company's six Sam's Club locations in Pickering, Vaughan,
Richmond Hill, London, Cambridge and Etobicoke, Ontario.
The company also announced the opening of a further 26 Wal-Mart
Supercentres to be unveiled this year in Canada, including expansions
of existing stores, relocations and new stores. This will bring the
number of Canadian Supercentres to 82 and Wal-Mart Canada's overall
store count to 316 by the end of the year.
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Albertsons to Close Nine Stores in California
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Albertsons will shut nine stores in
California between now and April 9. About a dozen workers are losing
their jobs, and the chain is working to reassign hundreds more to other
stores.
The Albertsons store closures are part of a strategy by corporate
parent Supervalu Inc. of Eden Prairie, Minnesota., to trim
underperforming stores.
After the closures, Albertsons will have 275 stores and about 26,000
union workers. Last Friday, Albertsons closed stores in Lakewood,
Canoga Park, Chula Vista and Encinitas. On April 9, Albertsons will
also close stores in San Diego, Cathedral City, Lancaster, Rancho
Cucamonga and Temple City.
The company also plans to change the nameplate of its South Gate store
to Lucky Stores, a brand it acquired in 1998 and then converted to
Albertsons. But now it is starting to rebuild Lucky as a low-price
chain. This would be just the fourth Lucky store in California. The
others are in El Centro, San Ysidro and Alhambra. An Albertsons store
in Van Nuys and one in Oxnard also are slated to eventually become
Lucky stores.
Nationwide, Supervalu plans to close about 50 stores. It also will open
fewer stores and scale back on remodeling stores to save money.
The company is forecasting that its same-store sales, an important
measure of a retailer's health, will decline one percent during its
2009 fiscal year.
Office Depot Accelerates Order Processing
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Office Depot implements Sterling Fax Conversion Services from Sterling
Commerce and AT&T. With this system, Office Depot can automate the
manual processing of all faxed orders across its customer service call
centers. Automating this process also provides Office Depot with the
reporting and visibility capabilities necessary to help achieve Payment
Card Industry (PCI) compliance.
"By implementing this new solution from AT&T, Office Depot will be
able to provide flexible IT systems that enable our customers to do
business with us the way they want to do business, while still ensuring
the highest levels of security," says Tim McGrath, vice president of
Customer Service for Office Depot. "Additionally, this new solution
helps Office Depot meet important PCI compliance requirements,
providing an added level of confidence for our customers."
Office Depot receives many orders directly by fax from consumers, and
they require manual order entry and processing. By automating this
process through Sterling Fax Conversion Services, Office Depot can
increase the level of accuracy and reduce time, requirements and costs.
Sterling Fax Conversion Services converts incoming faxes into
electronic data interchange (EDI) or extensible markup language (XML)
documents and reverses the process for outgoing documents. This
software combines human and artificial intelligence into a streamlined
process that helps minimize human intervention and manages costs by
efficiently converting fax transactions while detecting and handling
errors.
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