NEWSWORTHY
In era of online retail, Black Friday still lures American crowds
It would have been easy to turn on their computers at home over plates of leftover turkey and take advantage of the Black Friday deals most retailers now offer online. But across the country, thousands of shoppers flocked to stores on Thanksgiving or woke up ...
SoftBank to invest $2 billion in Coupang, S. Korea's largest online retailer
SoftBank Group Corp.'s Vision Fund will invest $2 billion in South Korea's Coupang, giving the e-commerce giant funds to accelerate development of new shopping and delivery services. Founded in 2010, Coupang is South Korea's largest online retailer and sells more than 120 million items from ...
Boxed in by a shrinking domestic market and consumer preferences shifting toward online shopping, the only way for Japanese department stores — as well as the broader retail sector — to survive is to get a slice of fast growing markets overseas, especially in ...
Signpost's cashierless kiosk in Tokyo signals a real challenge to Amazon in 'smart store' sector
Amazon.com Inc. is betting that stores of the future won't have any clerks or registers. A company in Japan thinks it can get there first. Signpost Corp., which has a staff of about 100, has already deployed its technology in a kiosk on the platform ...
Alibaba harnesses vast trove of shoppers' data to create 'spicy' Snickers bar
Brands spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year trying to figure out what consumers want. Now Alibaba is offering to help by vacuuming data up from the legions of people shopping, searching and sharing on its various platforms and providing it to companies eager ...
The government is considering giving effective 2 percent rebates for cashless purchases of all goods and services at small shops after next year's planned consumption tax hike, it was learned Saturday. The rebate program will be in place for about one year from October 2019, ...
Japan's consumers and businesses have mixed views on consumption tax hike next year
Consumers and businesses had a mixed response to the Abe government's decision Monday to lift the consumption tax rate to 10 percent next October as planned, with some understanding the need to restore fiscal health and others concerned about the impact on the economy. Retail ...
Alberta expects 80 to 100 cannabis stores licensed in a month
Alberta expects to have 80 to 100 cannabis retail stores licensed over the next month, with 17 locations ready for the first day of legal sales on Wednesday. The Canadian province is confident it will have adequate supplies ready for Wednesday, said Alain Maisonneuve, chief ...
Fast Retailing Co., operator of the Uniqlo casual clothing chain, said Thursday its group net profit rose 29.8 percent to a record ¥154.81 billion ($1.38 billion) in the year through August thanks to strong sales at home and abroad. The company said its group operating ...
Tokyo-based clothes recycling newbie to advance to Startup World Cup 2019
A Tokyo-based startup specializing in the business of recycling clothes is slated to proceed to the final stage of an annual global startup competition, scheduled to be held in San Francisco in May of next year. Jeplan Inc. won the Japan round of the Startup ...
