Evan Schuman

The traditionally long lines in post offices during the holiday season are noticeably shorter this year, and figures released Wednesday show why. About 1.1 billion fewer pieces of snail mail were sent in 2004, and thats on top of an almost 3.5 billion drop from 2003 and a 1.3 billion drop from 2002. All told, […]

Running the technology operations for a billion-dollar retail clothing chain is difficult enough during the holidays, let alone if most of your customers are too young to get their own credit cards, or even drive. Just ask Ron Ehlers, vice president for Information Systems at Pacific Sunwear of California Inc., which runs 743 PacSun stores […]

If the “Max” in Office Max is supposed to refer to the amount of time its e-commerce server takes to respond, its aptly named. And Targets target is apparently not lightning-fast e-commerce experiences. Those conclusions are courtesy of the latest round of Web traffic analysis from the folks at Keynote Systems. At the top of […]

For years, line-of-business managers have told IT executives that their goal is to improve efficiency. Their mission is to leverage hardware and software to do in a nanosecond what it takes human employees minutes, lunch breaks and vacations to do. Todays IT exec is quietly learning a different lesson: Efficiency is pleasant enough, but its […]

Friday is the much-cited Black Friday, where merchants hope the rush of holiday shoppers will push their financials into the black. But retailers know that, among those online and offline crowds, there will be thieves, taking advantage of the anonymity of crowds and the less-trained eye of seasonal workers. The retail world today provides a […]

In many ways, 2004 will be seen as a technological turning point for retail: the year that many technologies that have been hyped for years started to become real. Traditionally, retail has always been a mixed barcode for being technologically advanced. The largest retail giants—such as Wal-Mart—are among the most advanced companies in the world […]

Consumers are looking for black coal to put into their brick-and-mortar retailers stocking this holiday season, with complaints soaring about bad customer service experiences. But those same consumers are seemingly ecstatic with online customer service. Some of those results—courtesy of a new survey from American Express and the National Retail Federation—are not surprising. In the […]

Theres no shortage of legitimate reasons why the Sears-Kmart merger will not cause anyone in Bentonville, Ark., to lose much sleep. But most of the arguments boil down to two points. One: Historically, big mergers rarely succeed. Two: Adding weak plus weak doesnt equal strong. (A third point is that Wall Street loved the move, […]

Wawa CIO Neil McCarthys voice reveals his anger as he recounts a recent meeting he had with bank executives to complain about high credit card fees that are out of proportion with services. Wawas 550 stores sell a huge amount of gasoline: about 110,000 gallons per week per store, which places it among the highest […]

Reigning over 175 home entertainment stores in 21 states, Tweeter CIO Bill Morrison looks cautiously at the calendar as the year-end holidays approach. While many of his counterparts are trying to train oceans of seasonal employees and hoping that errors dont obliterate consumers service, goodwill and inventory accuracy, Morrison sits back, confident in the chains […]