Stores

DoorDash Opens DashMarts to Further Decimate the Urban Landscape, Sell You Hot Sauce

Delivery service DoorDash is taking a page out of the Amazon playbook and creating standalone stores called DashMarts—physical locations where consumers can pick up “grocery, and restaurant items, from ice cream and chips, to cough medicine and dog food, to spice rubs and packaged desserts from the local restaurants you love on DoorDash.” The company…

Toys’R’Us Isn’t Dead, It’s Just Becoming an ‘Experience’

Tru Kids Brand, the organization that bought the rights to the Toys“R”Us name as part of the chain’s massive fire sale last year, announced today that it was bringing the toy stores back to the United States in time for the holiday season. But not as the giant warehouse stores you remember with toys stacked…

Since 2013, rumors have circulated about Google opening a retail store in New York City. Now, Crain’s New York Business reports that the space leased—and spent $6 million renovating—is back on the market.

Hot Topic Buys ThinkGeek

Timmy the ThinkGeek Monkey isn’t sad. Not one bit. He’s just trying to fit in with his new friends! They’ve got, shall we say, a darker taste in fashion. They shared his love of Star Wars, Doctor Who, and Minecraft, so why not reciprocate? Oh, and $122 million in cash didn’t hurt either. Today, Hot…

Shopping for a Camera at This Amazing Store Is Way Better Than Ebay

If you’re into analog photography, most of the time the only way to shop is online. It is exceedingly rare to come across a physical store with a hearty stock of film cameras you can hold and touch. One such oasis is the Denton Camera Exchange in the fair city of Denton, Texas. The above…

Walmart Will Start Price-Matching Amazon at Its 5000 Stores

You’ll now be able to get Amazon’s bargain prices at your local Walmart, as the company embraces price-matching with online retailers. Reuters reports that Walmart told managers at its roughly 5000 stores that they’ll officially be able to offer customers the often cheaper prices available online. In the past, stores typically only matched published prices…

WSJ: Amazon Is Opening a Brick-and-Mortar Store in Manhattan

Amazon, the cyber store that sells everything, plans to open its first physical store at 7 W 34th Street in Midtown Manhattan just in time for the holiday season. The experimental store will work as a mini-warehouse for some same day deliveries in New York. It’ll surely serve as a nice little billboard, too. The…

Microsoft Is Opening a Flagship New York Store on Fifth Avenue

Microsoft has announced that it’s opening its first Manhattan flagship store, and it will be on Fifth Avenue—just a few blocks from Apple’s iconic glass cube. Rumors have swirled for the past couple of months about Microsoft wanting to open a fancy store in NYC. Now, it’s announced that it will be setting up shop…

Apple Now Has a Design Patent for Its Giant Glass Cube

Apple’s been on a tear to protect the look of its retail experiences, trademarking the design of its stores and patenting its proprietary see-through staircases. Now its glass cube flagship store in Manhattan is officially a patented design in the U.S., with “Steve P. Jobs” listed as one of the inventors. The patent for the…

Report: Microsoft Wants a Flash New York Store Near the Apple Cube

Microsoft has long been playing catch-up with Apple in terms of physical stores. But now rumor has it that it wants to open a fancy new store on Fifth Avenue, just a couple of blocks from Apple’s iconic glass cube. While Microsoft has over 50 stores in the U.S., it doesn’t have one in the…

Navigate by Barcode and Never Get Lost Again

Libraries have terrible maps; supermarkets and department stores have bad signage; all of them have a built-in system for navigation that we don’t use: barcodes. That’s the argument of researchers Simon Robinson, Jennifer Pearson, and Matt Jones from the Future Interaction Technology Lab at Swansea University. They’ve come up with a way to use barcodes…

Why Do Drug Stores Put Soap Under Lock and Key?

The last time I bought body wash at a downtown CVS, I had to call over an employee just to unlock the glass case. What? Why would anyone want to steal plastic bottles of soap worth a few bucks at best? The answer might surprise you. Alex Mayyasi, writing for Priceonomic’s blog, has dug up…

How Much of Your Shopping Is Done on Amazon?

If you live in a big city without a car, it’s probably easier to just do all your shopping on Amazon. If you drive everywhere and have a Costco membership, it might make sense to do all your shopping there. If you drive sometimes but like getting packages, maybe you combine the best of both…

You Can Now Buy Stuff From Right Inside a Torrent

BitTorrent’s always got something cooking, from a streaming video protocol that never overloads, to a neat little private cloud storage system. Now the company’s invented a new kind of torrent that lets content creators pack their own little store right inside. When you download a Bittorrent Bundle, you’ll be treated to a chunk of free…

A Look Inside Afghanistan’s Almost-Apple Store

Fake Apple stores are nothing new. China has a slew of them, all polished and shiny, appearing almost as if they are the genuine article at a glance. Quartz dug up some details on Afghanistan’s (fake) Apple store, and though it’s a bit more frumpy than most, it still gets the job done. https://gizmodo.com/fake-chinese-apple-store-looks-amazingly-real-5822918 Located…

Samsung Is Building 1,400 Retail Stores Inside Best Buys

In a bid to compete more directly with Apple, Samsung has announced that in the coming months it will open 1,400 Samsung Experience shops within Best Buy stores around the US. Following an agreement made by Sammy and Best Buy in December, the venture will see 900 stores open across the country by May, with…

Here’s a Guide to Last-Chance Store Hours

Still gotta go out and do some shopping? I’ll bet plenty of us do, but now that its pretty much too late to do that wonderful online thing, it’s time to hoof it to stores. You just have to make sure they’ll be open first. Here’s a handy little guide to help with that. Best…

Smart Store Displays Trigger Product Demos When You Pick Something Up

A Japanese clothing retailer has installed new display racks in its store outfitted with a device called the DLabHook which promises to make decision making a little easier. When a customer removes an item from a rack, a promotional video is played providing more info on the product while it’s demo’d by a model. The…

When Stores Open for Black Friday

It’s not just Wal-Mart that’s opening up its stores for Black Friday sales right about the time most people cut their turkey during Thanksgiving Dinner, a lot of stores are bumping up their opening times a lot earlier this year too. Here’s a list of when stores will open for ‘Black Friday’ also known as…

Apple May Be Using Retail Store Employees to Fix Their Crap Maps

Mac Rumors claims that Apple is “turning to select Retail Store employees to help improve Maps for iOS 6.” What a genius idea! The rumor site says that multiple sources “indicated that participating stores will dedicate 40 hours of staff time per week, distributed among a number of employees, to manually examine Apple’s mapping data…