Online Retailers Rebound After Last Year’s Christmas Delivery Debacle by Jason Del Rey at Recode. “Shoppers hired by StellaService placed 160 orders on the last possible day an order could be placed to make it in time for Christmas and found that eleven of those orders didn’t arrive on time, for a seven percent miss rate. But that’s still better than last year, when 12 percent of orders didn’t arrive on time.” Read more

 

Behind the $3.8B loss retailers expect by Herb Weisbaum at CNBC. “One of the biggest challenges continues to be “wardrobing”—the return of a used but non-defective item, such as clothing or electronics. The NRF report noted that an increasing percentage of return fraud is now being done with digital receipts, popular with many customers and being heavily promoted by retailers.” Read more / See the video

 

UK: 31% of goods purchased online this Christmas will be returned by Joel Lewin at Financial Times. “Most of these will be returned on so-called “Boomerang Thursday” — the first Thursday after Christmas, when a deluge of unwanted gifts will be sent back to ecommerce companies.” Read more

 

Retailers Save Discounts for Bargain Hunters by Shelly Banjo at WSJ. “A fifth of online shoppers are considered true “discount junkies,” people who make purchases only when plied with discounts, according to new data from AgilOne Inc….About 15% of shoppers generally pay full price for items and don’t bother searching for sales.” Read more (Subscription)

 

Amazon says it has 10 million new Prime members by Ben Miller at Puget Sound Bus. Journal. Read more

 

Costco’s Richard Galanti re-elected to Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco’s board of directors at Seattle Times. Read more

 

Ships stacking up in San Francisco Bay by Pete Carey at Mercury News. “Merrilees said one problem is the growth of mammoth ships capable of carrying as many 14,000 containers. “Not too long ago, a ship carrying five or six thousand containers was considered a monster,” he said.” Read more 

 

West Coast port jam could open America’s backyard to China by Thomas Lee at SF Gate. “Nicaragua broke ground on a $50 billion, 172 mile canal, to be completed by 2020. The project is being financed by Hong Kong-based HK Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Co Ltd , which is controlled by Wang Jing, a little-known Chinese telecom mogul well connected to China’s political elite. A new canal would pose a big threat to West Coast ports, already beset by dysfunction and competition.” Read more

 

Pinterest set for ad battle with Facebook, Google by Mike Isaac at NY Times via CNBC. “On New Year’s Day, the company plans to start selling ads on the site to marketers, sounding the call that Pinterest is open for business and that it wants to compete for ad dollars with the likes of Google, Twitter and Facebook.” Read more

 

With aw-shucks farewell visit, former Kroger CEO Dillon brings career full circle by Erin Caproni at Cincinnati Bus. Journal. “Dillon’s parents, Paul and Ruth Dillon, came to the store to watch their son. When he retires, there won’t be anymore Dillons working in the grocery business for the first time in decades.” Read more

 

Saks Fifth Avenue president to wed private equity rainmaker by Emily Smith at NY Post. “The stylish British beauty, who came from Harrods in London to revamp the Saks Fifth Avenue chain, was recently quietly engaged to Ford, known as Bill, whom she has been dating for about a year.” Read more

 

Canada: Vancouverites head to the shops for Boxing Day shopping blitz by Tracy Sherlock at Vancouver Sun. “An online survey commissioned by cashback shopping site Ebates.ca found that about 40 per cent of Canadians planned to shop on Boxing Day.” Read more

 

Sam’s Club Introduces Exclusive Furniture Collection by Nicholas Sparks “The collection was inspired by Sparks’s latest book, The Longest Ride (2013), and appears in the upcoming 20th Century Fox film based on this novel.” Read the release

 

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