Macy

Macy's holiday season has kicked off with its stores filled with the normal cold weather apparel for kids and knee-high women's boots. But the department store retailer has several firsts in the mix this year designed to boost sales — including new pickup and same-day delivery programs, along with an eye toward more unique vendor shops in 2015. 

After accepting Apple Pay at all of its stores on Oct. 20 — Apple Pay's launch day — Rite Aid apparently stopped its support for the technology yesterday, according to a report yesterday in Mac Rumors.

They compete tooth and nail to draw customers to their Midtown flagship stores, but Macy's and J.C. Penney are teaming up to block the thievery of organized crooks. The rivals have joined more than 100 companies and the NYPD to form an alliance that will be known as the Metropolitan Organized Retail Crime Alliance. Its objective is to improve retail stores’ security efforts by sharing intelligence on crews of bandits, scams and ripoffs. Target, Home Depot and Rite Aid have also signed up for the crime-busting venture. Computer giant Apple is poised to jump onboard soon, sources said.

Haggar Clothing Co. is beefing up its digital operation with an emphasis on mobile. The Dallas-based men's apparel maker created a new position, chief digital officer, and hired Eve Richey last week to fill the post. She's coming to Haggar from shoe company Toms, where she was vice president for global digital marketing. As a supplier to major U.S. chains including Kohl's, J.C. Penney, Macy's, Target, Sears, Belk and Amazon.com, Haggar is seeing more of its sales move online at those stores and on its own direct-to-consumer business.

The ability to better understand customer buying behavior, and then being able to actually use that knowledge to create optimized (i.e., personalized) marketing campaigns, is a key differentiator for retailers in today's hypercompetitive market, particularly when it comes to reaching and communicating with consumers online. 
With this in mind, Macy's has invested in a predictive analytics solution from SAP. The national department store chain, and specifically its e-commerce operation, Macys.com, deployed SAP's InfiniteInsight solution in the first quarter of 2014.

Download this May 2014 report from Forrester Research, Why Every Online Retailer Should "Ship-From-Store," and learn why the list of leading merchants that have rolled out ship-from-store programs, including Roots, Macy's, Toys"R"Us and Motorola, are rapidly growing.