It's not often thought of as a "brand," but the National Rifle Association has some of the highest brand recognition of any out there. Now, the NRA is making identifying with its brand easier with a whole new online shopping experience.Continue reading...

American Apparel may have been given only 18 months to live by Wall Street 24/7, but that’s not stopping the struggling brand from doing everything it can to survive.

Portfolio.com reports that the fashion retailer has partnered with eBay to “hopefully boost its Internet sales, which currently make up less than ten percent of the company's revenue.” The partnership kicks off Sept. 1.

The company is expecting it will generate several million dollars in sales in the first year, even though it will have to fork over a fee for each transaction performed on eBay, according to New York magazine.Continue reading...

In the video above, special agents codenamed k, g, and b, search for products and services with ‘deal appeal’ in a campaign for kgbdeals, an offshoot of New York-headquartered kgb, which has successfully worked its way to #3 in the UK's daily deals space.

In the past three months, Google searches for Groupon have increased by 78% compared to the first quarter of the year, according to Sky News, and 112% growth in the same period for Living Social.

But the largest increase came from kgbdeals, which reportedly saw a 443% rise in traffic to them via search engine marketing.Continue reading...

Las Vegas city government is moving locations and Zappos couldn’t be happier about it. The online shoe retailer based in Henderson, Nevada, yesterday received local officials' blessing to the e-tailer's amended deal to take over the Las Vegas City Hall building and relocate its corporate headquarters to downtown Vegas.

This is part of the city’s continued attempt to redevelop itself, and revitalize its local economy. As the Las Vegas Sun notes, Zappos' plan is to make the city's "downtown and Fremont Street East a mecca for music, food, affordable housing and other cultural amenities."Continue reading...

Diapers.com is spinning off to address the “other baby” in the family — the family pet.

Wag.com is being launched by Amazon's Quidsi e-commerce division as a companion site to Diapers.com and Soap.com (and rival to PetSmart, Petco and other pet e-tailers), selling products ranging from dog food to hamster cages. 

The Wag.com e-commerce brand, which is still in pre-launch mode, promises a 365-day return policy and free two-day shipping within the US on orders over $49. The site has already launched a Facebook and Twitter feed.

When Amazon launches a pet e-commerce site, it's a solid indicator that the pets market is booming.Continue reading...

Shopping online in Connecticut has just gotten a little pricier.

The state of Connecticut figured it could make some extra bucks for itself when it recently passed a law to apply an sales tax to online retailers that goes into effect July 1, the Associated Press reports. But some online retailers aren’t into the idea one iota and have decided to remove themselves from doing business with Connecticut-based affiliates in order to avoid the 6.35% tax.

The largest of these sites, Overstock.com, had fewer than 10 affiliates in the state that “have earned $250,000 from revenue sharing during the past three years,” the Greenwich Time site reports. No those affiliates will go without that extra revenue. 

The way that it works is that if an online shopper wants to get a product from Overstock that is actually coming from a Connecticut company, the tax would apply. Overstock, which generated $1.1 billion in revenue last year, called the move "unconstitutional," joining smaller online retailers in breaking ties with Connecticut-based retailers.Continue reading...

What do you do after you’ve successfully reached your brand’s goal of becoming the largest online destination for shoes…and you’ve already added handbags, eyewear, clothing, watches, and kids’ merchandise to your inventory?

If you’re Zappos, you introduce VIP customer status, including free overnight shipping, points for purchase to ascend the VIP leaderboard, a selection of avatars for onsite identity, and badges for signing up and writing reviews. And then you sweeten VIP membership with fun personalization features to enhance the shopping experience.Continue reading...

Gloople, the UK’s first social shopping e-commerce platform, was just shortlisted for the 2010 Econsultancy Innovation in E-commerce Award.

We first covered the site in January, noting its name as organic to its mission: Gloople = Glue People.

Designed for SMEs, Gloople "glues" social commerce tools to an e-commerce platform where shpopers do the selling for the brand owner.Continue reading...