An unlikely viral superstar has emerged: Kmart.

The retailer's latest ad, "Ship My Pants," has become a hit, reaching over 9.8 million views and more than 33,000 Facebook 'likes,' granting the here-to-fore unfunny brand a noticeable sense of humor and pique. Besides the well-played crude humor, the ad touches on an important and growing trend in the retail sector: free shipping.   

The campaign highlights Kmart’s partnership with Shop Your Way and seizes the shipping trend sweeping major e-retailers Amazon, Google and Walmart. Shipping is the lastest battleground for retail expansion as companies try to figure out how to make shopping experiences more seamless.Continue reading...

Ashton Kutcher is happy to flog his own products. This is the Twitter-savvy guy, after all, who invested in tech startups and then gave them some promo space on his sitcom, Two and a Half Men. He did the same thing when he guest-edited the first "social issue" of Details a few years back.

Now he’s got his money invested in a T-shirt company, so consumers shouldn’t be surprised when Kutcher shows up everywhere they look wearing one of his own products—if you can identify the logo-less tees, that is. The online company, Pickwick and Weller, was founded with two other fellas and goes after the “luxury for less” market.Continue reading...

eBay's latest initiative, Sell it Forward, adds a touch of philanthropy to its recent push to make the service more brand-centric and expand PayPal’s usage.

Sell it Forward lets users sell their new or lightly-used clothes, shoes, handbags and other wares and share the proceeds with Goodwill. If an item is deemed saleable and sells within two weeks, eBay customers receive 50 percent of the proceeds and the other 50 percent helps fund Goodwill's operations and charitable efforts. (If an item is not sold in 14 days, it becomes a straight donation to Goodwill, and customers receive a tax-deductable donation form.)Continue reading...

But wait—there's more! As in: There's more to the stories about Walmart planning to have lockers at its stores where online customers can pick up packages. It turns out that the chain may also want to turn its real-life locations into busy hubs for outgoing deliveries of goods by renting space and time in the vehicles of some of its customers.

Reuters reported that Walmart is considering such an initiative for same-day delivery to keep up with advances by Amazon and Google planned for that realm. The idea faces a lot of legal, regulatory and privacy obstacles, but it could be coming to a Walmart near you soon.

"I see a path to where [delivery] is crowd-sourced," Joel Anderson, chief executive of Walmart.com in the United States, told the news service. Another executive added: "This is at the brain-storming stage, but it's possible in a year or two."Continue reading...

In many respects, the future of retail is a moving target that continues to shift in response to consumer demand. Retailers are now using mobile payments to help them succeed in a market that is increasingly mobile even as they scramble to reinvent and preserve the in-store experience. 

When you bring these two trends together, they represent a not-so-subtle blending of distinctly different worlds: the physical store and the online store. It is here that battle lines are being drawn to determine who really owns the future of retail. That war is most evident when you examine some of the recent strategic moves by the top players.Continue reading...

Consider retailing a two-pronged challenge: On the one hand, retailers must accommodate the increasingly mobile consumer. On the other hand, the traditional retailer can't ignore the need to drive that consumer to a physical store. 

As highlighted in our previous post on the future of retail, there is a flurry of activity surrounding online retail initiatives right now, with particular emphasis on mobile. Mobile payments in particular are getting a lot of attention as retailers figure out ways to transfer the shopping experience to every sort of handheld device.

But there is an equally intense effort to reinvent the traditional store. In fact, many retailers are beginning to realize that rather than close stores, they can sustain them by giving them a much-needed facelift. More than a surface makeover, however, reinventing the store involves a thorough rework that often includes a growing trend: creating a "brand story" to engage and involve a consumer in the shopping experience.Continue reading...

It’s hard to believe that American Express is celebrating its 163rd birthday today, as the iconic brand continues a spry and active presence, pushing boundaries in social media while as fresh and enduring as those half its age. Case in point: its #163candles hashtag on Twitter today.

Just last month, the blue chip brand teamed with that whippersnapper on a social commerce experience that turns Twitter hashtags into purchases. The sync and tweet with #hashtags lets users buy $25 American Express Gift Cards and products from Amazon, Sony, Urban Zen and Xbox 360.

"Based on the initial success of Amex Sync for offers, we know there is significant power in combining our assets with Twitter's platform to bring value to Cardmembers and merchants," said Leslie Berland, SVP Digital Partnerships and Development. "Now, we're leveraging our unique technology and closed-loop network to introduce a seamless solution that redefines what's possible in the world of social commerce."Continue reading...

H&M has added another ampersand to its business portfolio. This one, though, is at a higher end than the attire found in the chain’s more than 2,000 locations worldwide.

& Other Stories launched on March 8th with a bash in London, where the new brand will have its first brick-and-mortar store that will offer the brand’s first clothing line as well as a number of products from other labels and designers. Called C-labs, these temporary partnerships include such companies as The Lake & Stars lingerie, Clare Vivier’s bags and accessories, Alyson Fox’s jewelry and fashion designs by Abigail Lorick Im, WWD reports. “We like working with people who we like,” Anna Teurnell, & Other Stories’ head of design, told WWD. “And these labels complement what we have already.”Continue reading...