Wal-Mart

Members of the rap group Run-DMC are suing Amazon.com and Wal-Mart for $50 million for trademark infringement. The suit, filed last Thursday in federal court in New York, accuses the retailers of manufacturing, marketing and selling products with the group's trademarked name, including glasses, hats, T-shirts and wallets. Run-DMC says in the suit that it…

Bed Bath & Beyond is being sued by a group of New Jersey workers who claim the company has been shorting its employees of overtime pay for years. The class-action lawsuit accuses the company of violating New Jersey's Wage and Hour Law by not paying some of its employees time-and-a-half for hours worked over 40 hours. The salaried employees were allegedly…

Wal-Mart is deploying “Holiday Helpers” to all of its 4,500 or so U.S. stores during the upcoming months. These workers, clad in yellow vests to make them easily identifiable to customers, will be tasked with speeding up checkout time by, among other things, fetching items that shoppers may have forgotten, so they don’t lose their…

According to The Wall Street Journal, Amazon.com plans to open convenience stores that sell milk, produce and other consumables, as well as drive-up destinations where shoppers can have their orders brought to their cars. People familiar with the strategy told the paper that shoppers could use their smartphones or screens scattered around the shops to place their…

For any business, the ultimate goal is to intertwine profit, growth and customer satisfaction. However, growth and customer satisfaction often come at the expense of profit. For many years, this tradeoff was the norm at Amazon.com — the company achieved amazing growth, but spent what would be profits on business experiments (e.g., fulfillment centers). Recently though, Amazon has strung…

Has e-commerce gobbled up brick-and-mortar? To answer that, let’s start with a brief history. eBay exploded onto the scene in a big way in the 1990s, and challenged some very long-held beliefs: Would people trust online commerce? You bet they would. People not only trusted e-commerce, but devoured it. Zappos, PayPal and countless others ballooned to $1 billion revenue businesses. By…

Products that minimize harm to our planet benefit all of us, thus the most sustainable retail solution is the most desirable solution. As a retailer, however, implementing sustainability doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice style. Sustainable products can be deemed design-forward by providing functional, fashionable products that allow retailers to send a message to consumers: You don’t have to sacrifice…

Despite various short-lived efforts over the years, most retail shopping carts are impressively low tech. However, a new patent issued to Wal-Mart paints a futuristic vision, with carts driving themselves from the parking lot right to the customer who called for it. If the patent is granted and Wal-Mart chooses to manufacture and deploy the carts, shoppers…

Wal-Mart has joined the list of tone-deaf companies using the upcoming anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks to sell products. At a store in Panama City Beach, Florida, a display was built out of soda to resemble the towers and above it, a message read: “We Will Never Forget.” Upset consumers took to Twitter to…

The growth of online marketplaces is one of the hottest trends in the retail industry. Listen in as Neel Grover, chairman of the board at Bluefly, shares why he thinks marketplaces are the next big thing for retailers. To listen to the full session, "More Than Just Amazon: Why Marketplaces Are an Increasingly Popular Option for Retailers…