Patricia Nakache, general partner at Trinity Ventures, isn’t a typical venture capitalist. She was freelancing for Fortune magazine when she interviewed some executives at Trinity about innovative management approaches. They turned the tables and asked her to join the company, which works with such high-profile clients as Starbucks, Zulily, Blue Nile and thredUP.

Benefit Cosmetics is using a cloud-based system to turn critics into customers, capturing feedback, understanding it in real time and communicating with customers who’ve enjoyed their shopping experience or raised a concern. The process focuses employees’ mindset on being “customer-centric,” says Katie Overdevest, senior manager of strategic retail development.

Retailers have consumers’ backs when it comes to cybersecurity; the challenges come in determining how to tell this to shoppers — and exactly how much to tell them. Rather than attempting to market data security efforts to the public, cybersecurity expert Eric Cole says retailers should implement policies and practices that show customers what is being done to protect them.

NRF is proud to provide our members with the online Retail Buying Guide to search for trusted vendors, products and services in the retail industry. Our guide is a user-friendly forum designed to bring suppliers and purchasers together. You can search by keyword, location, company name or category. Available whenever you need it, the Retail Buying Guide makes it easy to locate products and professional services geared to the retail industry. Click here to visit the online Retail Buying Guide! To advertise, please contact Sarah Allen for more information.

Amborella Organics offers a decidedly life-giving indulgence: Its series of floral lollipops has seeds embedded in the stick, ready for planting once the treat is through.

For those who have ever — even once in their lives — thought, “the more slime, the better,” this may be the best news of all time. Slime Box Club has created a premium monthly subscription specifically for lovers of slime.

The digital edition of STORES includes must-read pieces, including the articles featured here. Read the current issue and browse the archives for issues you may have missed.

After serving urban communities for more than 20 years, plus-size fashion retailer Ashley Stewart was on the brink of closing in 2013. In this week’s episode of NRF’s Retail Gets Real podcast, Ashley Stewart CEO James Rhee discusses his value-based leadership style and how his passion helped save the company.

Some of the largest brands in retail have sent a letter to President Trump outlining their concerns about the detrimental impact broadly applied tariffs on products from China could have on American families.

July’s NRFtech 2018 conference in San Francisco will offer CIOs, chief digital officers and senior IT executives a unique opportunity to network and discover new retail technology. There are only 150 spots available at the event.

Coop Värmland, a Swedish consumer cooperative that runs some 60 supermarkets, aims to optimize its staff schedules to reduce idle time and improve the customer experience working with workforce optimization specialist Zenopt. Zenopt’s software will help the retailer to plan its staffing more cost-effectively and smooth out its workload in order to reduce stresses on staff.

 

Authentic Brands Group LLC, owner of a global portfolio of celebrity and entertainment and lifestyle brands, announced a definitive agreement to purchase the American lifestyle brand Nautica from VF Corporation.

 

Commercetools, the leading provider of next-generation commerce, has extended its partnership with global business transformation agency Valtech. This expanded strategic partnership will enable brands, retailers and manufacturers in North America to provide their customers enhanced, shopping-enabled experiences beyond traditional websites.

 

Macy’s Inc. announced Mobile Checkout, powered by the Macy’s app and designed to speed the in-store checkout process. It is slated for a nationwide rollout to all full-line stores by the end of this year. In addition, an augmented reality furniture shopping experience, powered by Marxent’s 3D Cloud and VR solution, will be incorporated into the Macy’s app with a rollout beginning in April.

 

Souler, an influencer commerce platform, announced the addition of several new brands including Ben Sherman, Nambé and Rockport to its growing list of more than 100 companies leveraging influencers to increase brand awareness and generate additional revenue.

 

Affirm Inc., the company started by entrepreneur Max Levchin to provide fair and honest financial products, announced it will partner with merchants to make Affirm financing available in-store. Shoppers can use Affirm InStore in bricks-and-mortar locations, securing credit in just seconds before they even get to the cash register, and can pay for their purchase over time in simple, fixed monthly installments. Additionally, the company announced that consumers will have the ability to instantly add a newly issued Affirm virtual card to Apple Pay, the easy, secure and private way to pay, via the Affirm mobile app.

 

Mercatus, a leading provider in digital solutions for grocery, has partnered with Shipt, a leading online same-day delivery platform. The partnership will enable a turnkey solution, bringing personalized shopping and last-mile delivery to leading regional grocers, rounding out their fulfillment options and enhancing the online shopping experience through Shipt.

 

Alipay, operated by Ant Financial Services Group, is further expanding its footprint in the Americas through a partnership with Openpay in Mexico, allowing Alipay’s more than 600 million active users in China to use Alipay to make purchases from Openpay’s affiliated businesses in Mexico. Alipay is China’s leading payment provider and the primary means of online and mobile payment for Chinese consumers.

 

Axis network audio technologies, a division of Axis Communications, will integrate with several subscription-based music services to enable tailored background music for businesses in primarily retail establishments. By partnering with Soundtrack Your Brand, Royal Streaming, MUSIC2BIZ and Pinesker Media Company, Axis can now offer a complete solution for retailers who wish to easily manage all aspects of their in-store audio.

 

Bluecore, an AI-driven retail marketing platform that brings together website, customer and live product insights to match customers with the products they love, is partnering with Magento Commerce. Together, Magento and Bluecore will equip merchants with new opportunities to interact with their customers through individualized communications deployed directly from the Magento platform.

 

TableSafe Inc., maker of the first purpose-built pay-at-the-table platform for table-service restaurants, announced that 71 Above and Takami Sushi have become the first restaurants in the greater Los Angeles area to provide EMV-secured pay-at-the-table convenience for their guests using TableSafe’s RAIL payment platform.

 

HelloFresh SE has acquired Green Chef, the USDA-certified organic meal kit company. HelloFresh will now offer the largest selection of meal plans for consumers, adding Green Chef’s popular organic, vegan and gluten-free menus, including those plans compliant with paleo and keto diets.

 

For Eyes, a subsidiary of leading global optical retailer GrandVision, has chosen the Clutch platform to help it take an innovative approach to customer data, enabling a change in the way customers perceive and shop with the brand through smarter marketing.

 

Mystery Ranch, the Montana-based backpack company that makes packs for both military and consumer markets, has selected Centric Software to provide its product lifecycle management solution. Centric Software provides the most innovative enterprise solutions to fashion, retail, footwear, outdoor, luxury and consumer goods companies to achieve strategic and operational digital transformation goals.