Posts Tagged: "retailers"

Every once in awhile, Apple garners some attention when it files patent applications or receives patents related to its retail stores. Reports from late September in The Chicago Tribune focused on a patent application recently published by the USPTO for a retail shopping bag developed by Apple. U.S. Patent Application No. 20160264304, simply titled Bag, was filed to protect a retail paper bag formed from white paper with at least 60 percent post-consumer, or recycled, content. The paper bag also has a reinforcement insert adhered to the corners of the bag covering the bottom and a handle, 90 percent of which droops below the top edge of the bag when the handle isn’t being held. The use of the reinforcement insert increases the durability of the paper bag, allowing the paper to be constructed using a larger percentage of recycled material.

According to the patent application filed by Walmart, the system will utilize a series of docking stations, sensors, motors and cameras to offer consumers the ability to “hail” a shopping cart using an app on their smartphones, much like they would a taxi or Uber and that upon completion of use, the system will somehow be able to recognize abandoned carts within the store or in the parking lot and will be able to manually return itself to a docking station for use by another consumer.

Thus far in 2015, Best Buy has earned 20 patents from the USPTO. Although most of the company’s research and development is in disparate fields, as the text cluster from Innography shows us at least some R&D focus in the fields of electronic devices, audiovisual content and television monitors… We came across a couple of Best Buy patent applications describing technologies intended to encourage consumers to make purchases or provide gift card value, such as the innovation at the center of U.S. Patent Application No. 20150077425, titled Stored Value Digital Picture Frame. It would protect a stored value digital picture frame having an electronic digital picture frame.

As bleak as the picture looked for brick-and-mortar retail, it was much brighter for e-commerce and online retail, which saw their best day ever. According to global analytics firm comScore, 2015’s Cyber Monday saw $2.28 billion in online spending from desktop computer users, the heaviest day of online spending ever recorded and an increase of 12 percent over last year’s Cyber Monday results. When including sales from mobile device consumers, Cyber Monday sales surpassed $3.1 billion.

The patent filing activities of eBay are fairly active, the company placing 149th overall in 2014 in terms of patents earned from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office with 236 patents in that year, an increase of 15.1 percent over the previous year. So far through 2015, eBay has only earned 106 U.S. patents… In one recently published patent application, eBay is seeking a patent on an interactive fitting room experience at physical retail establishment locations. It claims a system comprising an interface module that displays a user interface, a camera configured to produce an image feed of an individual wearing the garment, a polling module that selects a target audience to poll for feedback related to the image where the target audience is selected based on the use case information and an interface module that displays a feedback interface comprising the feedback data. This system operates through an interactive mirror installed in a fitting room and presents an image for polling to social network contacts or to an anonymous audience.

As card-present transactions become less susceptible to fraud because of the shift to EMV chip card technologies, it’s expected that more fraud will shift to online platforms where it’s still relatively easy to input fraudulent financial information without being noticed; some reports indicate that online retail fraud in the U.S. alone is expected to rise by 106 percent in three years after October’s EMV liability shift from banks to business owners. One way that businesses conducting sales online can get themselves ready to respond quickly to fraud is through effective planning prior to major sales events like Black Friday or, perhaps more important when thinking about e-commerce, Cyber Monday. If those workers handling fulfillment of online orders are more aware of expected sales projections, it will help them be more aware of clues that the business might be a target for fraud if actual sales figures differ wildly.

Retailers always top the list of seasonal and holiday hiring sprees but one of the largest employer of seasonal workers the past few years doesn’t own a single brick-and-mortar retail establishment. That would be e-commerce giant Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) of Seattle, WA. In 2014, the Internet retailer announced that it would hire 80,000 seasonal workers during last year’s holiday season. In 2015, Amazon has upped that number to 100,000 workers that it plans to employ on at least a temporary basis. This makes Amazon the single largest employer of seasonal workers during 2015, ahead of United Parcel Service, Inc. (NYSE:UPS) and its 95,000 holiday hires.

Best Buy Co. recently released its financial earnings report for the first quarter of FY2015, which shows signs of life for the brick-and-mortar consumer electronics retailer. Indeed, financial analysts were stunned to see that Best Buy’s adjusted earnings from continuing operations actually rose from 35 cents per share in 2014’s first quarter to 37 cents per share; earnings estimates expected that figure to drop to 29 cents per share. Best Buy also posted a year-over-year increase in domestic revenues of about $100 million, an incredible feat during a year in which e-commerce continued to increase its take to 7 percent of all American retail sales.