ADVERTISEMENT How Vineyard Vines Differentiates its Brand Experience Across Shopping Channels Attend this Web seminar to learn the following: • Best practices and approaches for building a customer-centric cross-channel shopping experience • Strategies and details for brand participation programs like “Facebook, Twitter, and “College Whale Reps” • Details and features around the new vineyardvines.com website Register Now!

FAO Boutiques in Store for Toys 'R' Us

By Jim Tierney

Starting Nov. 1, FAO Schwarz-branded boutiques will be introduced in 585 Toys ’R’ Us stores nationwide. FAO Schwarz is also relaunching its its e-commerce site, FAO.com, and dropping a 40-page holiday catalog on Nov. 10.

Sierra Trading Post Starts Twitter Promotion

By Tim Parry

Discount general merchant Sierra Trading Post hopes to increase its presence on the Twitter and Facebook social media platforms. The cataloger is asking its customers to add the hashtag "CarpeDeal" to tweets or posts about Sierra Trading Post; it will reward the most creative entries with gift cards of up to $500.

ADVERTISEMENT 10 Trends That Will Make or Break Your Email Marketing ROI in 2010 -- Thursday, November 12 at 2:00 p.m. EST Spend an invaluable hour with prominent email marketing expert J.D. Peterson, who will reveal the latest trends in email marketing and show you how to leverage those trends to jump-start revenue for 2010 -- and pull ahead of the competition. Register now!!

Office Depot Launches Catalog for HUBs

By Tim Parry

Office Depot has released its first catalog that showcases its suppliers that are Historically Underutilized Businesses. HUBs are companies that have not historically had equal opportunities, and include certified minority, women, disabled, veteran and small businesses.

ADVERTISEMENT Come Surf With Us Looking for multichannel marketing news and commentary? Visit Multichannel Surfing on The Big Fat Marketing Blog, brought to you by the editors of Multichannel Merchant magazine, along with the editors and contributors from Chief Marketer, Direct and Promo. Opinions? Yes, you’ll find some here. You’ve been warned. Learn more

Pottery Barn Kids Snips Threads Spin-off

By Jim Tierney

The Pottery Barn Kids retail concept, Threads, has closed after just 15 months. The two baby clothing and gifts stores, located in New York and Bellevue, WA, had opened in late 2007. Parent company Williams-Sonoma had planned to expand the store, but the unforgiving economy prompted the retailer to halt the spin-off.

How Tokenization Can Help Reduce PCI Compliance Costs

By Gary Palgon

The clock is ticking on the July 1, 2010 deadline for complying with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards. Complying with PCI DSS is proving to be expensive and onerous for many, but tokenization, a new data security model may help.

Sales Fall 20% for 1-800-Flowers.com

First-quarter sales for multititle mailer 1-800-Flowers.com dropped 20%, to $108.3 million, compared to $135.4 million for the same period last year. Company officials said in a release that the decline in year-over-year sales was due to lower wholesale order volume in its DesignPac Gifts division, combined with lower demand in the consumer floral business.

Sales Down All Around For Frederick’s

Fourth-quarter sales for women’s apparel cataloger/retailer Frederick’s of Hollywood decreased 18%, to $34.4 million, from $42.1 million for the same period last year. Same-store sales decreased 6.5%. Direct sales sank nearly 12%. The company’s net loss was $7.02 million compared to net loss of $7.19 million last year.

Direct Sales Slide 27% for Golfsmith

Third-quarter sales for golf equipment cataloger/retailer Golfsmith decreased 11%, to $90.6 million, down from $101.7 million for the same period last year. Same-store sales fell 8.5% and direct sales dropped 27% for the Austin, TX-based company.

Direct Strong For Cabela’s Despite Cutbacks

(Direct Newsline) Cabela’s generated $624.3 million in revenue during its most recent third quarter ended Sept. 26. That's up from $611.8 million a year ago. The company’s net income jumped from $9.7 million to $18.8 million between the quarters. While its direct channel sales fell, the unit showed stronger operating income.

SUBSCRIBER TOOLS Change email address Unsubscribe Web version Archives