Happy New Year !!!   "Amazon Is Not A Commerce Company" by Alex Williams at Tech Crunch.  "  ...It’s why 2013 will be the big year for the retail and computing giant. It’s all coming together with its growing cloud infrastructure, voluminous data streams and content. It’s what Ray Wang of Constellation Research calls “matrix commerce.”  Wang argues that Amazon is not a commerce company at all. It’s a big data company that has developed a cloud infrastructure that is profitable and subsidizes its retail operations. It has the mobile devices and content that it can spread through a [...]

  "Christmas Day retail traffic up 27% over 2011; Amazon & Walmart most visited sites" by Sean Ludwig at Venture Beat.   Here’s the top ten list: https://venturebeat.com/2012/12/27/christmas-day-retail-traffic-up-27-over-2011-amazon-walmart-most-visited-sites/#OL4A042irkdt3eXS.99   "Home Depot to Lowe’s Busiest Season Threatened by Strike" by Chris Burritt & Brooke Sutherland at Bloomberg.  "Home Depot Inc. and Lowe’s Cos. have the most at stake among retailers facing a dockworkers’ strike, with possible port closings cutting off shipments right before the lucrative gardening season.  Home Depot, the biggest U.S. home-improvement chain, is making plans in case 15,000 workers at ports from Maine to Texas walk off the job, [...]

  "US retail sales creep higher in weak holiday season-early data" at Reuters. "Holiday-related sales rose 0.7 percent from Oct. 28 through Dec. 24, compared with a 2 percent increase last year, according to data from MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse...The latest holiday season sales would be the worst performance since 2008, during the last recession.  "The broad brush was Christmas wasn't all that merry for retailers, and you have to ask what those margins look like if the top line didn't meet their expectations. So it could be a very unmerry Christmas for retailers," said Kim Forrest, senior equity research analyst at [...]

  "Mayor Ray Nagin's dealings with Home Depot a focus of federal probe" by Gordon Russell in The Times-Picayune.  "Just a couple of nagging details were keeping Home Depot from breaking ground on a new store in Central City in early 2007: The retailer needed the city of New Orleans to sell it several streets that were within the planned store's huge footprint. And the sale of the streets was being held up by a pesky "community benefits agreement...But Home Depot wanted no part of such an agreement. And the retailer had an ally in Mayor Ray Nagin, who, as [...]

  Follow us on Twitter @retaileyeretail "Why Walmart Took Over Facebook for 72 Hours" by Brad Tuttle in Time.  "But does an increased presence by retailers in social media actually boost sales? The answer’s not clear. An IBM Digital Analytics report indicates that social media’s impact on sales appears to be minimal:  Shoppers referred from Social Networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube generated 0.41 percent of all online sales on Cyber Monday, a decrease of more than 26 percent from 2011.  The results of a study published by Forrester in the fall also came to the conclusion that [...]

  Follow us on Twitter @retaileyeretail "Extreme Franchising: Bringing RadioShack to Afghanistan" by Nick Leiber at Bloomberg Businessweek.  "The next time you stroll through downtown Kabul, you might be able to buy batteries from a RadioShack outlet, the result of a new effort by the U.S. to shore up Afghanistan’s economy: selling American franchises to Afghan entrepreneurs.  The U.S. has set a 2014 deadline for troops to withdraw from Afghanistan and turn security over to Afghan military and police. That is prompting capital flight, depressing property values, and triggering other economic pain. That’s where franchising might fit—and an initial foray [...]

  "The Bribery Aisle: How Wal-Mart Used Payoffs to Get Its Way in Mexico" by David Barstow in NY Times.  "But 30 miles away in Mexico City, at the headquarters of Wal-Mart de Mexico, executives were not about to be thwarted by an unfavorable zoning decision. Instead, records and interviews show, they decided to undo the damage with one well-placed $52,000 bribe.  The plan was simple. The zoning map would not become law until it was published in a government newspaper. So Wal-Mart de Mexico arranged to bribe an official to change the map before it was sent to the [...]

  "Home Depot Starts Innovation Lab in Austin by Acquiring Blacklocus" by Kira Newman at Tech Cocktail.  "Today, BlackLocus announced that it was acquired by The Home Depot and will become the Home Depot’s Innovation Lab in Austin, Texas.BlackLocus makes business software for retailers that turns lots of data into understandable, actionable information. As part of Home Depot, it will help the big-box retailer decide on pricing, which selection of items to carry, and the best item descriptions...Home Depot acquired another startup, Redbeacon, in January. Redbeacon is a website where conusmers can get quotes from service providers like plumbers and [...]