Immediately following the New Year, you probably noticed a few changes. The gym parking lot was jammed packed. Every other commercial on TV was for some kind of home workout tape or weight loss solution. Nearly every store was highlighting the “new you.”
Not even thirty days have gone by and things are starting to change again. People are falling off the bandwagon. Grocery stores are replacing the diet products with Valentine’s Day candy and the commercials for diet plans and fitness products have reverted back to ads about fast food chains and cars.
New Year’s Resolutions don’t last very long but there is one resolution that shouldn’t be let go.
Following the New Year, Hotel News Now featured… Read More
By Beth McGarrity
The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of activity as we prepared for one of the biggest retail shows of the year. More than 24,000 retailers, technology providers, suppliers and partners gathered for the retail industry’s premier event, NRF 2012. For any professional in the retail sector, the “Big Show” is the go-to affair for networking, business development, educational opportunities and much, much more.
What is most exciting about an event like NRF 2012 is seeing, first-hand, key innovations and learning about the future of the industry. As I walked the show floor, networked with colleagues and attended breakout sessions, several major themes resonated that will clearly shape the years ahead:
… Read More
By Beth McGarrity
This week kicks off NRF 2012, one of the largest shows for retailers, where new technologies, solutions and offerings are announced all week long. In fact, we just announced a new integrated solution for Columbia Sportswear to secure payment transactions across 54 retail locations. So, when I was scanning headlines today, I was surprised to see that Zappos.com was in the headlines, but not in a positive way. The major online retailer had fallen prey to data thieves.
Yet, as I continued reading, a statement caught my eye –
Zappos said that hackers gained access to customers’ names, e-mail addresses, billing and shipping addresses, phone numbers, and the last four digits of credit card… Read More