Macy's

American Eagle Outfitters (AEO), the Pittsburgh-based multichannel retailer of on-trend apparel and accessories, found a unique way to bring shoppers into its stores earlier this year.

Macy’s has taken steps to improve customers’ shopping experience in-store and on the go via enhanced mobile offerings.

Macy’s has launched an m-commerce website for its Macy’s brand department store chain and plans to roll out a similar Bloomingdale’s mobile shop next week.

Same-store sales, excluding Walmart, saw a 3.2 percent gain in June, up from May's 2.7 percent increase, according to Retail Forward's monthly report for 31 retailers. Last month's increase also topped June 2009's 4.7 percent decline, evaluated without Walmart. "The June results are positive, but the recovery in retail sales will be challenged in the coming months as long as doubts grow among shoppers," says Frank Badillo, senior economist at Retail Forward. "And it's clear that the news from the Gulf to Europe is starting to affect the outlook among shoppers." Among the biggest gains: Nordstrom (14.1 percent), Zumiez (10.9

As Americans' love affair with shopping cools, retailers are venturing overseas in search of growth. Bloomingdale's and Crate & Barrel each opened their first store outside the U.S. in Dubai this year. Abercrombie & Fitch just opened its first store in London. Sears has begun shipping tools and clothing to 90 countries. Macy's is looking at going into China. And Target, the discount chain that for a decade has resisted Wall Street pressure to expand internationally, revealed this spring that it wants to open stores outside the U.S. and is looking at Canada, Mexico and Latin America.

Welcome to Online Retailing 2.0. Traditional brick-and-mortar retailers once outsourced their online sales to specialty "fulfillment" companies. Today they are running their own online operations — and increasingly challenging their executive brainpower to find more sophisticated ways to compete with online-only retailers such as Amazon.com.

Macy's tapped Yahoo this week to recreate its offline Memorial Day sales circular into a Smart Ad-powered pullover ad unit in Yahoo Mail, becoming the first retailer to run the advertisement. Yahoo worked with PointRoll to develop the rollover technology integrated into the Smart Ad. Clicking on it takes consumers to the Macy's home page, but hovering over it opens the unit into a full-page circular, taking up the entire page in Yahoo Mail.

Macy's, the iconic retail brand, has launched 
visitmacysusa.com, a website designed to target domestic and international travelers — and ultimately bring them into Macy's stores as their shopping destinations.

A new trend seems to be popping up in the world of retail: a greater 
emphasis on local marketing by national retailers.

In an early example of how a major fashion retailer is working with the iPad, Macy's is using the Apple tablet to turn its summer catalogue into a shoppable slideshow. Macy's 60-page print catalogue was converted into a two-page spread into which a 20-page slide show is embedded, with links to shop at Macys.com. The ad is running across the digital editions of 20 titles including Elle Decor and Marie Claire.