Two iconic but troubled retailers took steps to resolve questions about their future this week although their actions can be seen as taking each in a different direction.

JC Penney announced that their vacant CEO position will be filled by Jill Soltau who until now filled a similar role for Joann Stores. The company was badly in need of direction and has much to do to secure its financial wellbeing, making this hire now gives Soltau the ability to have some impact on how Penney plans for the Holiday season and in many ways that will be a key factor in how the market views her and the future of the company. More information about the hire can be found here.

Sears shared very different news with the announcement of the closing of eleven stores and that layoffs in some stores would be begin on December 23^rd.  Sears CEO Eddie Lampert is in negotiation with creditors to restructure debt and to sell assets.  The proposal included warnings about near term financial problems.  You can read about the issues facing Sears here.

What is the future of these two retail giants and is it possible that one or both can survive long term in the new retail climate?  We have seen other large retailers fail and while there is some finality to one version of a retailer we also know that they can be reincarnated as FAO Schwarz prepares to reopen a store in New York City. There is also news about a potential revival of Toys R Us.

It is very hard to predict the fate of JC Penney and Sears or whether this incarnation of both stores would necessarily be the last one.

If you have any questions or comments, please contact us at marketing@freestylesoutions.com.

With the holiday’s fast approaching, we wanted to share posts from last year where we spoke about key areas of an order management system to get the most out of your system during the holiday season.

We wanted to revisit these posts for you that way you guys can get an idea on how exactly these area’s can greatly impact you to have a strong holiday season.

We also will revisit our on-demand webinars we ran last year showing you the inside of Multichannel Order Manager (M.O.M.) so you’re ready to take control of this holiday season, making this one more so than last one the most important holiday season ever.

We covered last year:

• Order Promotions
• Order Entry Essentials
• Ways to Drive Free Shipping
• Shipping Workflow
• Inventory Management
• Protecting Yourself from Phishing Emails
• Reduce Mistakes and Save Money – Warehouse Essentials
• Holiday Returns Management

As always keep a look out on our blog for any latest news, trends for this holiday season.

In our latest eBook we tackle the ever so challenging task of understanding the Nutraceutical industry and how a strong back office system can mean all the difference in the world.

In this eBook, we look at the Nutraceutical industry and how to implement a strategy to manage your complex inventory requirements with a system like Multichannel Order Manager (M.O.M.).

This eBook is available to anyone who is interested in reading about inventory and order management, those who sell in the nutraceutical space and to those who have an interest in the industry and want to see some of the trends impacting the space.

To read more about it, visit our information center here. To learn more about what we can do to improve operations for Nutraceutical industry companies, contact us at marketing@freestylesolutions.com.

In our latest Customer Success Story, we look at long time M.O.M. user, Byrd Cookie Company and how the introduction to M.O.M. Shipping Powered by Shippo has allowed them to ship out products in record time.

We show the two integrations and how they work well with one another, we also hear from Byrd Cookie themselves as they talk about the improvements on the shipping side of things since M.O.M. and Shippo began an impactful partnership.

You can watch a webinar where Shippo joins us and we talk about our integration with them here. You can also read about Byrd Cookie’s successes on their shipping process, right on the Shippo site. You can contact us at marketing@freestylesolutions.com, for a hard copy of the Success Story or any questions regarding the integration between the two.

JC Penney is one of the iconic retail brands in the United States and a place where most of us have shopped. The trouble facing retail giants has visited Penney’s and the past few years have not been kind to the giant with declining sales and store closures being frequent news.

The ship was righted somewhat by former CEO Marvin Ellison who has since moved on to Lowe’s and some triage has been practiced, helping stem the red ink.  But recently announced quarterly results have spurred analysts to downgrade the chain’s credit rating and the remainder of 2018 seems to be shaping up as challenging, to put it kindly. The situation is not as grave as what faces Sears and some positives are in place, but the downgraded credit rating will make it far more expensive for the next CEO to borrow the capital needed to chart a new direction.

This news continues what has been a trend of tough headwinds for some retailers while similar department stores like Macy’s, Kohl’s and Neiman Marcus have enjoyed better, if not spectacular results.

All of this makes us wonder how the financial situations of the broad spectrum of large retailers will affect the upcoming holiday season and how their profit and inventory challenges will affect the strategies of pure play eCommerce sellers. It is entirely possible that we will see aggressive pricing from JC Penney both in store and online as they look to move excess inventory in the 4^th qtr.  Will that be a winning strategy or just further triage?  How will smaller companies compete, that is question we will be studying.

For more insight into what lies ahead for JC Penney please visit here.

If you have questions or would like to share your thoughts, please leave a comment or contact us at marketing@freesytlesolutions.com.

Tax policy continues to be the single most discussed topic in the eCommerce industry and it is clear that our customers and prospects are spending considerable time reviewing their new tax collection and reporting tasks.

Our mission at Freestyle is help our customers understand their obligations and to explore the partnerships we have available within our solutions to help them comply with all the changes. The steps we have taken to inform them include the MOM focused webinar held on the August 9^th (recording here) and the Webinar we are holding with Avalara, one of our partners, on August 23^rd.

During the webinar Avalara will provide their thoughts on the SCOTUS decision and detail how their solution will help eCommerce companies to collect, report and comply with the coming tax changes.

To register for the webinar please visit here.

You may have recently received an email from Tony Kyberd, our President at Freestyle Software asking you to participate in a survey where we ask you to help us understand your day-to-day use of the product.

If you missed it, you can take a look at the survey to answer questions we have asked to better understand how we should go and map the future of Multichannel Order Manager (M.O.M.) and its suite of products.

This feedback is valuable to us, as it will give us an idea of how you, our customer uses M.O.M. We will take the feedback you provide and combine it with what we find from industry trends, regulatory and security requirements, tickets entered in our help desk system, feedback from our trusted partners and other resources.

We thank you for taking the time to answer these questions and value your feedback. Feel free to reach out to me separately with any questions you have, or any additional feedback that you want to mention outside of the survey. If you would like to get a link to the survey, reach out to me or our marketing team at marketing@freestylesolutions.com.

With the recent Supreme Court decision on South Dakota v Wayfair, Freestyle Software has been working on solutions to help integrate these changes into the M.O.M. system.

First a quick recap on what happened, on June 21, 2018 the Supreme Court ruled in favor of South Dakota. What this means is that going forward, if you as a merchant accrue more than $100,000 in sales OR have 200 individual sales in the state per calendar year you will be required to collect and report on the state you have collected tax in. We expect that many states will enact their own laws and that the tax compliance burden facing eCommerce companies will continue to increase.

What we’re doing

By now you’re been thinking about that million-dollar question, what do I need to do and how will Freestyle help me?

We are working on three options for you and it is up to you the merchant to select the option that best suits your needs.

Option 1:

Import tax data via our API plugin – This will require you to be on version 8 or higher, and to use our API to import the tax rates for each state you do business in. This would then require you to export out the reporting required for you to submit to each state where you exceeded the threshold.

Option 2 (In Progress):

Get the tax rates in M.O.M. 10 – This will be available for version 10 only. We have worked with partners to grab the tax rates for each individual state and will now allow you to select the tax tables that you need. These can then be imported into M.O.M. directly. Reporting will still need to be done manually.

Option 3 (Currently Researching):

As we work on what’s next, we are researching possible integrations with Avalara, TaxJar and other popular tax tools to allow you to import tax calculations from M.O.M. into the system directly. This would require a subscription to one of the tax services.

On August 9, we will be holding our first Software for Life Office Hour Session, open to all current customers, where we can answer your questions on this topic and talk about our plans to support you on behalf of this landmark decision. Sign up today if you already haven’t.

Haven’t heard about Software for Life, or want to learn more? Contact you solutions specialist today, to learn about Office Hours and more with Software for Life. You can reach us at sales@freestylesolutions.com.

Customers are always looking to find ways to improve their business and most importantly to jump into something head on, to be one with the times and more importantly with how their customers expect to shop.

Read our latest success story on Newton Homeopathic, where you learn their reasoning behind the need to update their mobile presence, as well as the successes they have had since recently updating their website to be mobile friendly and one with the times.

You can click here to view our page to download the success story and if you want to contact us to learn more about advantages of having a mobile presence, contact us at marketing@freestylesolutions.com.

Amazon ended speculation and announced that Prime Day 2018 will be July 17^th, except that it will actually start at 3:00 PM on July 16^th.

Expect this Prime Day to be bigger than ever and exactly how big will be up to Amazon. It might be an event that Amazon has created but it has developed into one of the most anticipated days on the shopping calendar and the only one that has its beginning and end decided by the event sponsor.

The brilliance of the event is that it spurs not only sales but enrollment in Prime subscriptions and according to data in an article in Digital Commerce 360. Prime Day sales topped $2.41 Billion in 2017.

What we are interested in is how eTailers will respond to the flow of traffic to Amazon and attempt to gain their share of consumer spend on Prime Day.  Please share your thoughts below and feel free to contact us at marketing@freestylesolutions.com.