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HIT PARADE

Nine months after Crown American Realty Trust launched Web sites for its 26 malls, more than 301,000 visitors had hit various pages over 1.9 million times, and nearly 21,000 people had signed up to receive e-mail from the listed retailers. Most popular by far was Bath & Body Works (12,241), followed by J.C. Penney (8,798), Sears (7,382) and Victoria’s Secret (5,955). Next came Waldenbooks (5,907), K&B Toys (5,246), Payless Shoes (5,205) and Gap (5,039). By a big majority (83%), women outnumbered men in e-mail signups, and two-thirds of them were between 25 and 54 years old. The sites are “one-stop shopping for information on what’s going on with the tenants,” explained Christine Menna, the company’s vice president for corporate information and marketing. And, of course, they also are one-stop shopping for a mall interested in what’s going on with its shoppers.

 

FREE SHIPPING SAILS OFF INTO THE SUNSET

Shipping costs were always seen as an Achilles heel for e-tailers trying to compete with stores, and, to attract customers, they attempted to get around the problem by paying the tab themselves. Now, struggling to make a profit, half the biggest e-tailers have taken the opposite tack, and are padding shipping costs to increase revenues, according to a report by Jupiter Media Matrix, a New York City-based firm providing research on the new economy. For instance, with CDNow charging $2.99 for shipping the first CD and 99 cents for each additional CD, a customer ordering 200 CDs will pay $200 in shipping and handling, even though the real cost to the company is $28. Amazon took another route this summer, eliminating shipping costs for two or more items, but padding the price of the purchases instead.

 

WIRED BY WAL-MART

Starting this fall, Wal-Mart will sell unlimited access to the Internet for just under $10 a month, following in the footsteps of Kmart’s BlueLight.com. The service is designed to direct customers to its online store, Wal-Mart spokeswoman Cynthia Lin told SCT. BlueLight at press time was offering users a three-tiered system: 12 hours of free use; 100 hours for $9.95; and up to six months of unlimited access with purchases. BlueLight had started out by providing unlimited free Internet access, but found that too many people were spending hours online and buying nothing.

 

 

NOW THAT’S A MALL

eBay is allowing high-volume sellers to set up cyber storefronts on its site, charging them a base monthly rent of $9.95, 5 cents for each item listed and a commission. Sound familiar? This mall-like initiative marks another step in eBay’s evolution from an auction site to a fixed-price enterprise, according to eBay spokesman Kevin Pursglove. “We want to give sellers a choice,” he told SCT.

A STORE IS (RE)BORN

Usually retail Web sites take the name of their brick-and-mortar counterparts, but the 50—year—old Chicago-based chain of maternity stores formerly known as Dan Howard’s Maternity Outlet and Mothertime has done it the other way around. The 110 Dan Howard’s Maternity Outlet stores and the 60 Mothertime locations have all been renamed imaternity, taking the name of the company’s online operation.

 

 

THE BRITISH ARE DOT.COMING

Britain’s largest supermarket group, Tesco, which runs the world’s biggest and so far only profitable online grocery business, has paid $22 million for a 35% stake in Safeway’s online outlet GroceryWorks. This gives Tesco a toe in the door in the United States, the world’s largest home shopping market. “We expect GroceryWorks will be operating profitably by the end of next year,” Tesco’s Chief Executive Terry Leahy told Reuters.

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