Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

Wait, recycling bins? Yes, 100 very high-class recycling bins outfitted with large, Internet-connected digital screens that show advertising (the financial district's government—yes, it has its own government—gets 5 percent of the airtime to display public announcements). But recently Renew added a new feature to a dozen of the bins: the ability to capture any passing smartphone's unique MAC address if it has Wi-Fi turned on. (Which, these being financial-district yuppies, is pretty much a given.) You can see the possibilities—but not necessarily all the possibilities that Renew sees.Read more...

While it's not surprising for a $2.6 billion retailer to develop in-store technology like that, no one seems to think of actually buying the startup as something most retailers can do. In part, that's because most chains are deeply marinated in the buy-don't-build concept, which makes perfect sense when it comes to ERP but no longer really holds for non-enterprise software. Besides, we're not talking about acquiring IBM here: Sephora said the acquisition will add eight or ten people to its payroll.Read more...

This should be a really good idea, and maybe even a good product for some chains if it's implemented right (we haven't seen details yet). But let's imagine it is: The PINpad belongs to the service provider. Card data is encrypted and transferred via the service provider's network, not the merchant's. A token is kicked back to the store POS with the card approval, so the merchant can track customers and meet branded-cart transaction detail requirements. No card data ever comes near the merchant's systems. What could possibly be wrong with this plan?Read more...

More precisely, it misses why NFC has fared so extremely poorly in the U.S., especially for payment. The comparison of technologies—be it Light Field Communication (LFC) or using the touch-screen of a phone such as is being done by TouchBase—to NFC usually implies that if NFC phones were more plentiful or if the POS interface was simpler or if the phone connection was faster, then NFC would have flourished. The reality, though, is that while those tech issues are true and were obstacles, tech problems weren't anywhere close to NFC's biggest headache. It has always been the business issues—and none of today's much-touted approaches seem to have a solution for that.Read more...

Store management should care as much about whether a transaction started in mobile or in-store as for whether an in-store entered the store through the South entrance or the West entrance. True merged channel thinking would say, "What do I care how they came into my store as long as they came in?"Read more...

Remember that SAP exec who last year was arrested for slapping fake barcodes on products within a Target—and his defense was that he was simply testing his company’s systems? Seems he cut a plea deal this month with county prosecutors in California, agreeing to plead guilty to one burglary count. The plea deal recommends to the judge a sentence of one month in jail, five months of home detention and three years of probation.

If he was really just testing SAP systems as his lawyer argued in court, this suggested sentence and conviction might be unwarranted. But Thomas Langenbach, VP at the SAP Integration & Certification Center (ICC) at SAP Labs at the time of his arrest (LinkedIn still has him at SAP in that role), was said by police to have then sold the merchandise on eBay. If true, that rather strongly undermines the pure research defense. East Inflatable Rentals…

At its most simple level, the upgrade merely allows shoppers to scan physical receipts from Walmart (more precisely, to scan the QR codes printed on such receipts)to receive an electronic version. For the shopper, it's a nice way to reduce paper clutter and also organize purchases in one place. For Walmart, though, it's much more.Read more...

But this means that when the technology fails, it is the consumer who must suffer the consequences, writes Legal Columnist Mark Rasch—when ordinarily the risk of loss would have remained with the merchant. And he has more than a few day-to-day examples to make the point.Read more...

If that sounds a bit familiar, it may be because Schumer was saying back in November 2011 that he was going to call the FTC because two shopping malls were tracking customers by way of their phones. It only took him 20 months to get around to it. And in light of the fact that the FTC has been warning retailers for almost a year not to engage in surreptitious tracking—and is getting increasingly aggressive in its efforts—Schumer seems like he's a wee bit behind the curve. He also doesn't seem to have thought through his proposed send-an-opt-out-message solution. But we're sure he'll get around to explaining all that—in another 20 months or so.Read more...

But a sharp-eyed Washington Post reporter noticed an oddity in the indictment that has less to do with cops and robbers than with mag-stripe and chip-and-PIN: Stolen European card numbers were sold for $50 each, while U.S. numbers fetched a mere $10.Read more...

According to a class-action lawsuit that was moved from state to federal court last week, when a Pennsylvania customer uses a two-for-one coupon, Walmart charges sales tax on both items, but it's only supposed to charge for one. Because Walmart gets to keep 1 percent of the sales tax it collects as a collection fee, the chain is being accused of unjust enrichment from every coupon sale it has made since June 2007.Read more...

Books-A-Million doesn't appear to be trying to reduce its need to stock inventory with the machine. Instead, it's going after sales of books it wouldn't normally stock anyway. The idea is that instead of sending customers away to order an out-of-print book from Amazon (or theoretically have the store order it and wait a week, but how likely is that?), the kiosk will be able to download and print the book in a matter of minutes. The reality is likely to be a little more complicated.Read more...

With all of the bitter retail rivalries and customer-stealing efforts, I found this story out of Syracuse, NY, refreshing. Seems that an LP officer working for Abercrombie & Fitch (NYSE:ANF) noticed a shopper shoving jeans in a white bag. Fearing the worst, he reached out to his counterparts at neighbors JCPenney (NYSE:JCP) and Lord & Taylor and they then jointly subdued the thief.

Can you imagine IT workers at Walmart asking counterparts at Target for help with a programming challenge or Treasury people cooperating on a payroll snafu? Loss Prevention often gets the most dangerous duties and they always wonder if corporate will have their back in case things turn ugly. (You need not worry. The answer is almost certainly “nope, not for a second.”)And with all of this, they have enough focus on just getting the job done that petty corporate rivalries are irrelevant. I know it’s naïve and impractical, but it’s probably not time poorly spent to look at what these dedicated souls for JCPenney, Lord & Taylor and Abercrombie were able to accomplish one day in Syracuse and to think about it.…

The argument for the shopper speaks to the intent of the original legislation—or, more precisely, the intent of the legislators who crafted that initial legislation. Did they not indeed intend that if shoppers must go to public stores to make purchases, those stores must allow in and support all shoppers equally? The counter is that the law understandably makes no reference to e-commerce and that if Congress wants to pass such a law, great, but until it does, courts must assume that a law means what it says and nothing more.Read more...

As a result, if potential customers know what they're supposed to do with a QR code, they can easily do it. But how are they supposed to know that there's any special significance to the image in an ad or porter or brochure?Read more...

Think it's because Barnes & Noble is in the dead-tree book business? So is Amazon. Besides, at last report the brick-and-mortar bookstore business was still holding up (if only barely). It's the Nook and the chain's efforts to merge physical book and E-book retailing that have been a bottomless money pit. So why did Barnes & Noble—having lost its biggest physical-store competitor when Borders went under—fail to gain any merged channel traction?Read more...

In a handful of jurisdictions, the mere possession of such devices is illegal. What the vendor, San Diego-based Indyme, is pushing is a silent system that alerts LP that a foiled bag (calling it a "booster bag" is so clichéd) or magnet has entered the store and it flags the shopper and allows the shopper to be tracked, hopefully discretely. It also triggers security cameras to follow the shopper.Read more...

Nearby stores within the Ralph's and Albertson's chains avoid this issue by simply forcing the shopper to close out the order before proceeding to payment, according to a California TV station's report. The Safeway stores had a "finish" button but was it not required that it be hit before proceeding to payment. One wonders how much time was spent watching and fixing these holes and creating and distributing the signs, as well as dealing with customers who were apparently paying for other shoppers. It's also possible that many of those ripped-off shoppers never detected it, but they will now that media coverage has kicked in. How will those shoppers feel about Safeway's "let the glitch happen and we'll fix the individuals who notice later" approach? Compare all that to how much time it would have likely taken IT to simply force that the "finish" button be hit before payment was accepted? Ahhh, the wacky world of retail cost-benefit and analysis.Read more...

This is bad for an infinite number of reasons, but none more striking than the fact that associates are the primary interaction point with shoppers. When they see something new and unfamiliar, the associate is where they turn. When that inquiry is met with a baffled look and a pair of shrugged shoulders, that IT initiative is about to lose any shoppers—and IT may never know why. (They'd know if they asked associates, but if thought about asking associates, they would have had them briefed in the first place.)Read more...

CVS now gets three extremely valuable pieces of data: First, a list of prescription drugs presumably being filled by a rival pharmacy. What a clear chance to argue that those particular drugs should be brought over to CVS, an opportunity that doesn't exist without this information. Secondly, a list of various other things the customer is buying, many of which are likely sold by CVS. Another sales opportunity. Third, given that this is a mobile app, the data is already tied into a specific customer. This sharply enriches the CRM profile for CVS customers—and does it for very few dollars and in a way that seems to be altruistic.Read more...

Over the past decade, Council officials, retail IT people and QSAs have begun to question the quarterly requirement, but the fear was that retailers would simply not do it, as they could never cost-justify it, particularly for Level 4 retailers. The council has always had a strong pragmatic nature, weighing the effectiveness of guidelines against what they could realistically hope for retailers to do.Read more...

The question, then, is whether it has to start in-store. What if this hypothetical chain pushes some attractive incentives to get lots of customers and prospects to download its free mobile app? And buried in the terms and conditions is the right for the app to monitor images? The next selfie or Snapchat that the shopper sends is captured and the facial data points are noted. Here's where it gets even freakier. Once the mobile app has identified the face of the shopper—and has linked it to whatever mobile shopper that customer has done—it can tell the in-store camera databases what to look for. When that shopper walks in, it can connect the mobile activity with any observed in-store activity.Read more...

Personally, I've never met someone who was as personable, intelligent and just plain nice as Walt. He will be missed far more than any words can convey.Read more...

What is being given up is data, but this isn't referring to the limiters your team will give to Twitter ("we want 18-24 year old women who have Tweeted about clothing in the prior 96 hours and who are nearing our store between 9 AM and 10 PM"). The data at risk are the responses. Let's say you broadcast these discount messages to 4,000 proximity shoppers and 300 react, 250 download the coupon and 86 redeem the coupon. You won't be the only one saving those 86 names in the "nice" list, the one that you'll want to check a lot more than twice. So will Twitter.Read more...

But on Thursday (June 27), Citi reissued that investors' note at Target's prompting, because in reality Target's IT spending will actually rise next year. It seems there was a communication problem between Target's top executives and Citi. The new version of the note reads: "TGT is investing approx. $0.20-$0.25 per share more in technology this year than last year. Next year, the incremental spending on technology is expected to be worth $0.05-$0.10/share YOY." No slashed IT budget. No wild swing between investing in new systems and digesting the results. In short, a much more conventional IT budget story. But wait—what if Citi had gotten it right the first time? Could that even have worked? Read more...