Brookstone, Inc.

In episode 78 of Total Retail Talks, Kiran Smith, vice president, chief marketing officer at Brookstone, a retailer of unique gift ideas and cool gadgets, discusses how chip card technology is helping the company cut down on fraudulent purchases. In addition, Smith offers her advice for other retailers that are integrating chip card technology into…

There are some things that anyone who lived during the 1990s did — whether they care to admit it or not. We all learned the Macarena, everyone got a Rachel haircut and telling another human being to talk to the hand in no way sounded ridiculous to anyone. And rolled into the pantheon of quintessentially…

Specialty retailer Brookstone is preparing to file for bankruptcy as early as Sunday with a plan in place to be bought by another specialty retailer, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Spencer Spirit Holdings Inc., which owns the retail chain Spencer's and costume retailer Spirit, has been in discussions with Brookstone for weeks and both retailers are looking to finalize sale paperwork over the weekend leading up to a bankruptcy filing, the report said. 

As a robot rolled down the aisle welcoming attendees of NEMOA's directXchange conference to yesterday morning's keynote presentation, it was clear what the theme of Jim Speltz's speech would be: innovation. The unusual entrance for Brookstone's president and CEO — he followed shortly behind the robot that was broadcasting his voice to the crowd — exemplifies the culture of innovation embodied at the omnichannel retailer of unique gifts.

Brookstone, the innovative product development company and multichannel specialty retailer, announced the appointment of Stephen Bebis as the company's new president and CEO and as a member of the company's board of directors, effective immediately. Prior to joining Brookstone, Bebis spent 14 years as founder, president and CEO of Golf Town, the largest specialty golf retailer in Canada, and one of the largest in the world. Starting the business from scratch, Bebis grew Golf Town to 57 locations across Canada and led the expansion of the company into the Boston market last year with seven stores.

At a time when engagement is more important than ever in retail, shoppers can still count on Brookstone to deliver entertainment, relevancy and purposeful fun in-store. Brookstone's Vice President, Chief Information Officer Bill Wood shares his brand's secrets for product innovation and merchandising magic. Tune in and learn how Brookstone blends it all into a successful retail strategy.

Brookstone is expanding into the mobile space with its first mobile commerce-enabled website. Brookstone teamed with mobile developer Usablenet to create a website compatible with any web-enabled handheld. The site adds value by letting customers shop for products, view rich media content and locate nearby stores.

People On the Move Neiman Marcus: The multichannel apparel marketer has promoted its retail division president/CEO Karen Katz to executive vice president of the parent company, Neiman Marcus Group. The company has also promoted the Group’s senior vice president and CFO James Skinner to executive vice president and CFO. Sears: The multichannel retailer has hired Louis Ramery as its new senior vice president, customer relationship marketing. Ramery, who’ll have overall responsibilities for developing and executing the Sears Holdings’ relationship marketing strategies and programs, will report to Maureen McGuire, Sears Holdings’ chief marketing officer. He was previously with Digitas, a marketing agency network. J.C. Penney: The multichannel

While speaking last week at the NEMOA conference in Portland, Maine, Steve August, operational vice president of customer marketing for Brookstone, lauded the stability with which his company now can operate. That’s nice, but why? He devoted his session to explaining the Merrimack, N.H.-based housewares and electronics marketer’s “SUPER” marketing approach — SUPER being a self-coined acronym that stands for Brookstone’s new marketing campaign The SUPER campaign encompasses a Stable modeled environment, with a known Universe, Predictable performance, growth Expansion and a Reduction in costs. In its second year, the program was tested for a full year with a single model and a single

In a session during last week’s NEMOA conference in Portland, Maine, Lois Boyle, president/chief creative officer at catalog consulting firm J. Schmid & Assocs., said that the customer experience is the key factor in developing a successful catalog company. Stressing that in today’s world you’re more in competition with consumers’ time than with their pocketbooks, Boyle provided a few ways to help your catalog break through the clutter of everyday life. Included below are four of those tips: 1. Develop a schemata (customer’s frame of reference). Calling it the “curse of knowledge,” Boyle said that many catalogers know too much. “We get so close