The Retail Design Diva is officially in Chicago for GlobalShop 2013, taking place this week April 16-18! Woo hoo! The Diva and her friends at DDI Magazine will be roaming the show floor—from conference sessions to exhibitor booths to parties and everywhere else in between. We’ll be blogging LIVE from the show all three days about the latest retail design musings, hottest products and attendee opinions. No detail shall go uncovered as we scour the show for interesting and exciting speakers, products and conference sessions.

If you’ll be at GlobalShop too, check back here for live updates and get the inside scoop of must-sees! Continue reading →

Love has been in the air lately and it was also in Banana Republic’s store windows on Valentine’s Day. It’s all part of the San Francisco-based retailer’s “Love” campaign.

Banana Republic is partnering with Match.com to host eight in-store meet-and-greet events for the online dating site’s subscribers in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and a few other markets. Customers who are also members of Match.com will be able to mingle at after-hours mixers while enjoying refreshments and a free music CD.

“Love” also includes social media outreach, using photos from fashion and lifestyle blogger Joy D. Cho, author of “Oh Joy,” to write about her own personal love story. Continue reading →

Now this is an interesting development: Walmart is more “likeable” than Kim Kardashian? Well that’s what WSL/Strategic Retail found when it surveyed some 1,796 shoppers recruited from an online panel of consumers ages 16 and over.

Apparently, brands and retailers have the most followed or “Liked” pages on social media, according to the report from WSL/Strategic Retail, a New York-based company that follows shopper behavior and retail trends.

The report broke it down like this:

Nearly two-thirds (61 percent) of users who “Fan” social media pages are choosing to follow brands and retailers—beating out celebrities and TV shows, which are followed by just more than half of users. Continue reading →

It’s a new year and time for list making. J. Walter Thompson (JWT), the global marketing communications giant, has released its 2013 edition of Things to Watch Retail Report, which serves up a forecast of key trends, including drivers that will significantly impact consumer mindsets and behavior in the year to come. Wondering what JWT has its eye on? Check out it out below:

Click-and-Collect
Customers order online, then pick up the goods (frequently groceries) at a store nearby. You read about Tesco’s South Korean pilot program last January in DDI. U.S. retailers testing the waters include Ahold’s Peapod. And Amazon and eBay are getting into the pickup game, too. Continue reading →

I’m pretty sure we just entered the future. You know, the future we’ve been seeing in movies (i.e. The Matrix, Cloud Atlas, etc.) for years. A future where we just have a small device that scans codes and then what we want magically appears.

Yes, that future.

And it’s here now.

Walmart and Mattel recently teamed up to create a 17-mile underground walkway in Toronto that is also a virtual toy store. This way, commuters can walk through while using their smartphones to scan QR codes for the toys they want to buy little Johnny or Susie for Christmas. From there, Walmart ships said toys to their residence—for free. Continue reading →