Online design retailer Fab Inc. is in advanced talks to raise $250 million to $300 million in venture capital in a deal that would value the fast-growing but unprofitable company at $1 billion not including the new capital, people familiar with the matter said.

The deal and its list of final participants hasn’t closed, but it is expected to wrap up in mid-June, with existing investor Atomico is leading the round, the people said. Atomico did not respond to requests for comment.

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That’s what David Goldstein, president of research outfit Channel Marketing, said of Apple after the grand opening of the company’s first retail stores in 2001. Yet 12 years later, the lights in Apple’s stores remain lit, there are 406 of them spread across 14 countries, and they boast hands-down some of the most valuable retail space in the world.

In the first quarter, Apple’s average revenue per store topped out at about $13 million, reaching its highest level ever for a non-holiday quarter, according to Asymco analyst Horace Dediu. And the company collected a record $57.60 in revenue per visitor, with about $12 of that being profit.

Impressive numbers for Apple, which continues to outperform all other retailers on a per-square-foot basis in the U.S., by a very wide margin. Apple Stores earn twice as much per square foot as Tiffany & Co., the second-most-lucrative U.S. retailer, and three times as much as Lululemon Athletica, the third-most-lucrative.

And the company’s average revenue per visitor will only improve as it expands internationally, particularly in big untapped markets like China. Apple essentially doubled down on its retail presence in greater China over the past year, raising the number of stores to 11 from six. And according to CEO Tim Cook, that’s just the beginning.

“This isn’t nearly what we need, and it’s not the final by any means,” Cook said earlier this year. “We’re not even close to that. But I feel that we’re making great progress, and I am very happy with how things are going.”

And whatever the China market may lack in individual wealth, it makes up for in volume.

“This is one of the great paradoxes in Apple retail: The more Apple expands internationally, the higher their average retail revenue becomes, despite them opening stores in emerging markets such as China,” said Carl Howe, VP for research and data sciences at Yankee Group. “As a proof point, the New York flagship 5th Avenue Apple store used to be one of the highest grossing stores in the entire Apple chain, pulling in somewhere around $350 million in revenue in 2010. Today — based on anecdotal evidence, but I believe this to be true — nearly every Apple store in China sells as much or more than the 5th Avenue store. China may have a lower percentage of wealthy people than the U.S., but they have more absolute numbers of them.

“What I think this all says is that Apple has itself as a global aspirational brand, and that people will go to amazing economic lengths to own Apple products,” Howe said. “So long as Apple maintains that premium brand and value, the only limits to its retail growth is how many stores it can build.”

Joyus, the video shopping platform startup led by former top Google exec Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, said it had raised $11.5 million in a second round of funding, led by InterWest Partners and Time Warner Investments. Existing investors Accel Partners and Harrison Metal also participated.

In related news, Joyus said that Ido Leffler, co-founder of natural beauty brand Yes To, would join its board.

The San Francisco-based Joyus has now raised total capital of $19 million to push its efforts to combine video with retailing online. Along with the funding news, the company underscored the efficacy of its approach in a study it also released that it says shows “fashion, beauty and lifestyle brands can directly monetize video through direct response product sales.”

Using premium video content to flack its wares, Joyus said that it converts at 5.15 times the rate of visitors who only browse product listings on the site and that its viewers buy 4.9 times more than those who don’t watch the product videos.

“Every time someone watches a video, Joyus can measure the resulting sales revenue, creating the first ever metrics for return on investment (ROI) using online video to drive product sales,” said Joyus, which noted that on a half-dozen product areas that the average revenue per video (RPV) view ranges from 47 cents to 93 cents, meaning every thousand views of video on Joyus produces between $470 and $930 in direct sales revenue. Joyus shares a cut of the sales on its site with its merchants and provides the purchasing tools.

While others might dispute this performance and many online retailers have added video to their sales processes, Joyus CEO and founder Cassidy said in an interview that online retail has to shift from a focus on engagement statistics and monetization via brand advertising to direct product sales results.

“The data on video shopping needs to be aimed at a return on the investment rather than on just brand recognition,” she said. “We think by providing an informative and entertaining experience, where you can make purchases right away, consumers buy and that this is the direction online commerce is moving.”

As I noted in a previous post about Joyus when it launched in mid-2011: “If you think about a link-laden infomercial, you’ll get a general idea of what is being created by Joyus.”

While Cassidy did note that a comparison could be made to television shopping networks like HSN, which shows elaborate demos of its products, Joyus has its own tech stack and video platform that allows shoppers to watch in a non-linear way that is preferable online and also on mobile.

“We are aimed at those customers who are bred and born on digital, so the merchandising formula is different,” said Cassidy. “This is a shopper from 30 to 50 who wants entertainment and commerce together in a format that is convenient.”

Penney’s board met Monday and agreed to replace the former Apple Inc. executive after his plan for revamping the chain’s 1,100 department stores produced a disastrous drop in sales.

Myron Ullman, whom Mr. Johnson succeeded as CEO, will retake the top job and also has joined the board.

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The blue-and-yellow logo shines atop a large building in a sprawling strip mall, next to a Guitar Center and not far from a Costco, a Chipotle and a Steak ’n Shake.

Inside, though, it is home to one of the first Samsung shops to be located inside a Best Buy. Samsung’s 450-square-foot shop occupies less than 1 percent of the Best Buy’s overall area, but its central spot means that anyone looking to buy an iPad or Mac has to walk by the giant display of Samsung laptops, phones and tablets.

That makes life pretty good for Brian Hagglund, the consultant Samsung hired to oversee operations at the store. Hagglund, who has worked as a representative for other electronics companies in the past, said he is often able to sell would-be iPad buyers on the benefits of Samsung’s pen-equipped Galaxy Note tablet.

“That’s one of our biggest opportunities,” he said, noting he has a pretty easy sell if he gets just five minutes to show off the Samsung tablet.

The Lewisville location is one of six stores where Best Buy has been testing the store-within-a-store concept ahead of Thursday’s formal announcement.

So far, Saturdays are the busiest times, for potential buyers as well as those coming in to fix a problem or ask a question. (How to take a screenshot is the most common query, Hagglund said.)

Hagglund and his part-time helpers can do basic support tasks such as updating a phone’s software or diagnosing hardware issues. They also have a phone they can use to call if they need further help.

That phone has only been needed three times, Hagglund said, oddly enough all on one day filled with particularly challenging issues.

With the Samsung Experience Shops inside Best Buy, the Korean electronics giant is hoping to give its customers a place to see multiple Samsung products in action, get help and build some of the same brand loyalty that Apple, Microsoft and Sony get through their stores without having to make the same investment in real estate.

Samsung has made smaller retail ventures in the past, including a New York City showroom that it closed about a year ago after running it for several years. Retail head Ketrina Dunagan said the Columbus Circle location was popular internally, but did little for customers.

More recently, Samsung had 14 kiosks during the past holiday season where it pitched its Galaxy range of products.

Best Buy officials said the retailer found it had to do surprisingly little shifting to clear the space for Samsung, noting that what appears to be prime real estate was previously home to CDs and DVDs, not exactly the hottest segment of its business.

But it is making a big investment in Samsung, hoping that the fast-growing brand will help bring in more customers at a time when physical retail store sales are struggling.

Best Buy will continue to display Samsung phones, tablets, cameras and PCs in their respective categories, in addition to handing over the space needed for the Samsung shops.

However, this time the company has opted not to follow the same path as its rival. Whereas Apple opened its own chain of stores, Samsung has elected to cozy up closer to an existing retailer, at least for now.

The company is partnering with Best Buy and will open 1,400 Samsung Experience shops within the retailer’s existing stores.

“Seventy percent of consumers live within 10 miles of a Best Buy,” said Ketrina Dunagan, the Samsung VP heading the retail effort. Dunagan said that the Korean electronics giant considered opening its own stores, but quickly decided that partnering with Best Buy was a whole lot more appealing than trying to, say, open 10 stores of its own this year.

Of course, Apple didn’t exactly take an either/or approach, as it also has a store-within-a-store concept in Best Buy, though not as extensive as the new Samsung shops.

Samsung’s effort was cemented at a meeting in December between top leaders of the two companies; officials have spent the last few months laying out a game plan.

About 900 of the Samsung stores will open by May, with many starting this month and the entire rollout expected by the end of June.

Samsung and Best Buy have quietly been testing the concept for the last few weeks at six stores in three metropolitan areas — Dallas, Chicago and Minneapolis, Minn.

The stores feature two to four tables of Samsung tablets, phones, cameras and laptops, along with a help desk and a wall of accessories. The stores-within-a-store will have Best Buy personnel as well as Samsung-hired “experience consultants” trained on the company’s range of products.

Dunagan, though, contrasted Samsung’s approach with Apple’s.

“Our goal is not we remain expert and you remain subservient to us,” she said. “We want [customers to feel] empowered, valued and delighted such that you become the expert, not us.”

Samsung’s range of services will initially be more limited than some of those that have come to be expected from Apple’s stores. Samsung workers will be able to do software upgrades and some triage of hardware issues, but won’t be able to handle out-of-warranty hardware repairs.

At the Best Buy store in the suburban Dallas town of Lewisville, Texas, the Samsung shop occupies about 450 square feet of prime real estate in the front and center of the store.

The store here, like other Samsung shops, has a “concierge desk” staffed by someone trained to offer support for many types of software issues.

Samsung declined to say what it might have in store with other retailers or with the carriers, but noted there are some exclusive elements in the Best Buy deal.

“We are in constant partnership with our other carriers and retailers,” Dunagan said.

According to sources, Amazon paid about $150 million for Goodreads, the popular books recommendation service. But that number could close in on $200 million, if certain performance metrics are met.

And, while BusinessWeek ran a we-are-just-guessing story today that posited a self-described “overly simple, back-of-the-envelope estimate” of $1 billion, sources said that number is simply wrong.

I am still trying to determine how much of the deal was cash — most of it, said sources — and how much was stock.

The San Francisco-based Goodreads had raised close to $3 million from a range of angel investors, as well as True Ventures. The sale is a big win for the firm, which apparently owned between 20 percent and 30 percent of Goodreads.

The online retail giant bought the company to help its book-y social discovery efforts for customers.

Amazon declined to comment, but the Seattle-based company said previously that the deal should close in the second quarter. It’s not the first time Amazon has bought a social book site — in 2008, the company acquired Shelfari for under $10 million.

Preorders will ship the week of May 13, and the device will arrive in U.S. Best Buy stores beginning May 19. It will cost $80.

The tiny, three-inch Leap sensor is meant to be placed in front of computer keyboards and, using hyper-precise motion sensor technology, tracks finger gestures and reflects the movements on screen. It currently works with Windows 7 and 8, and Mac OS X 10.7 and 10.8, on desktops and laptops. (For a visual of how it works, check out the video embedded here.)

Last month, the company raised $30 million in funding from existing and new investors, and also announced a partnership with Asus to distribute the Leap with select Asus notebooks and PCs.

Leap Motion today also divulged a series of app titles in development that will work with the sensor, including Cut the Rope, Wreck-It Ralph and Painter Freestyle Beta. The company’s app store has been named “Airspace.”

High-profile Silicon Valley entrepreneur Max Levchin is launching a new mobile payments startup today called Affirm.

It’s the first project emerging from Levchin’s San Francisco tech incubator Hard, Valuable, Fun (HVF), which he started after selling his last company — Slide — to Google and then eventually leaving the search giant. Previous to that, Levchin and investor Peter Thiel had sold PayPal to eBay.

While it might seem at first as if Affirm is in direct competition with other mobile payments-focused companies such as Square and Stripe, it seems to be aimed at another layer of the value chain in an effort to improve conversion for mobile payments.

In fact, Stripe — in which Levchin is an investor, too — will be processing credit card payments on the back end.

But it will be an uphill battle for Levchin in the current payments arena, with a range of challenges from a multitude of rivals to regulatory scrutiny to the risks associated with credit in general.

Its most similar competitor, for example, is Klarna, a hugely funded company based in Sweden that offers payment solutions for a wide range of online storefronts across Europe that did $200 million in revenue last year. Klarna, which means “clear” in Swedish, is likely to be eying the U.S. market and has well-regard VC Mike Moritz of Sequoia Capital on its board.

As part of its effort, Affirm will use Facebook for authentication of consumers, and also use a number of other social and data signals to assess risk. It will then guarantee payment to merchants — who will pay Affirm a fee — after this check.

“We are trying to get as close as possible to one-click, which has always been the case on the desktop,” said Levchin in an interview today. “In mobile, it has become an imperative to be able to buy it now or you lose a customer quickly.”

Levchin described Affirm as a digital charge card rather than a credit card, trying to be valuable to merchants by lowering the abandonment rate of mobile transactions. Affirm’s beta launch retail partner is 1-800-Flowers.

“You will essentially be putting a purchase on a digital tab, and we are going to make it work for us by looking at all available data to determine if you are someone who will pay it back,” said Levchin.

Like an American Express or other charge card, consumers will have about 30 days to settle bills, although Affirm will not be making any money from them.

As to why he decided to enter the increasingly competitive online payment space — which is also rife with regulatory and fraud issues — Levchin said that his efforts at PayPal did not go far enough.

“Payments online are still too hard — we started the revolution with PayPal and democratized payments for small businesses, but we stopped short of changing the system,” he said. “The world is now awash in data and we can see consumers in a lot clearer ways.”

In addition, he added, the “overwhelming transformation of everything toward mobile changes all the fundamentals.”

Relying on Facebook could be an issue, of course, opening up a thicket of privacy issues and also worrisome reliance on the social networking giant. But Levchin said that Affirm’s system depends on the company for confirming identity more than anything else and there will eventually be a number of ways to do that.

Other data Affirm will be using, he said, range from incomes per zip code and even a user’s mobile device ID.

Affirm has been funded by Levchin and a group of friends in the “low-digit millions,” he said, with only a few dozen employees compared to bigger mobile payments efforts from others.

He said he knows the risk of entering the space, especially given that there are only so many solutions and a limited retailer attention.

Still, Levchin noted: “I just think there is so much more to do. Technology has come a long way since PayPal.”

“They don’t have to go in the store and feel it anymore,” Rubin said, during a roundtable with reporters at Mobile World Congress on Tuesday.

Plus, he said, the Google hardware effort is still in its infancy. “For Nexus, I don’t think the program is far enough along to think about the necessity of having these things in a retail store,” he said.

As for whether Google as a whole might nonetheless be considering retail stores, “Google has no plans and we have nothing to announce,” he said.

During the hourlong roundtable, Rubin also addressed other hot topics, including Samsung’s dominance in the Android market.

He and colleagues were coy on the company’s effort to move into subscription music, noting only that the Google Play marketplace is still in its early days.

“I’ve seen the same rumors you have,” said Google Play head Jamie Rosenberg. “I’m not going to comment.”

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The stores would likely sell Google-branded hardware, these people said. But it isn’t clear when or where any stores would open, and one of the people said the Internet giant might not move forward with the plan this year.

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The company’s opposition to the proposal is a little surprising, since the bill itself would not substantially change the way it conducts business. But eBay is arguing that it could affect the lives of some of its largest marketplace sellers.

“No small business should face new taxes,” said Brian Bieron, eBay’s senior director of global public policy. “There’s no benefit compared to the harm that would be done.”

The Marketplace Fairness Act, reintroduced to the Senate this week, will allow states to collect sales tax online, as long as they have simplified their tax laws.

Hundreds of companies support the proposal, including Amazon, Best Buy, Barnes & Noble, Gap, Home Depot, J.C. Penney, REI, Sears, Target and Walmart. Many brick-and-mortar retailers, in particular, are throwing their weight behind it because they believe that, for years now, Amazon has had an unfair advantage because it did not collect sales tax at the time of purchase.

The two organizations listed as being in opposition are eBay and the Heritage Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, according to materials supplied by the supporters. Other organizations, however, are against the bill.

EBay says it worries about the law’s impact on small businesses in particular. If passed, retailers that have less than $1 million in out-of-state sales in the prior calendar year can apply for exemption.

But Bieron says that number is not nearly high enough and is completely arbitrary. He says that the U.S. Small Business Administration has definitions for what constitutes a small business, and that it has determined that a company that deals in “electronic shopping” is small until it reaches $30 million in revenue — or 30 times the exemption level.

EBay declined to say how many of its sellers would have to start paying taxes if the law was passed. It said that its largest customers are usually also selling on other platforms, so they don’t know how many would be above the limit. “We do know that we have a couple hundred thousand folks who are small businesses and entrepreneurs; they are more than casual sellers,” Bieron said.

The whole point of the law is for states to simplify the tax-collection process, but Bieron argues that the the proposal would still be too onerous for a company with limited resources.

“Our view has always been that a small business exemption should protect a small business,” he said.

In a letter sent to the Senate on Thursday, Paul Misener, Amazon’s VP for global public policy, applauded the bill: “I am writing to thank you for your bill, which will allow states with simplified rules to require sales tax collection by out-of-state sellers who choose to make sales to in-state buyers.”

Asa Mathat / AllThingsD.com

“We are building the Uber for delivery people,” Donahoe said this morning at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference, following an appearance by Apple’s Tim Cook. “We think we can do it at scale. No one single retailer can do it on their own, so we are building it for the retail industry and using our technology capabilities to build it.”

His opinions differ drastically from Amazon’s last public statements on the topic. In July, Amazon CFO Tom Szkutak said the company was building more distribution centers to be closer to customers and to speed up delivery times, “but in terms of same-day delivery, we don’t see a way to do same-day on a broad scale at the moment.”

Donahoe said he believes that there is plenty of unused inventory in today’s delivery systems to make it work. The goal is to be able to bid out each order to the nearest driver, similar to the way Uber taps into a network of town cars looking for their next fare.

So far, eBay is experimenting on a small scale with pilot programs in San Francisco and parts of New York City. The eBay Now app allows you to look for local inventory at several stores, including Macy’s and Walgreens. After an order is placed, the products are delivered within two to four hours (right now, Donahoe said, times are averaging one to two hours).

He said the system doesn’t work for any one retailer on their own, but that it could work by providing the service to a network of companies with many locations. Still, that isn’t stopping other mega merchants, like Walmart, from also experimenting with same-day delivery. The benefit to eBay or Walmart, in general, is that they are relying on inventory located in stores near central locations, unlike Amazon, which owns massive distribution centers often based on the outskirts of town.

Is delivery something that could eventually make money? Donahoe thinks so.

“We are trying to build it, and over time, if we are building value, then the retailers will pay for those leads,” he said.

The first store is at 323 University Avenue in Palo Alto, Calif., the historic tech startup hub (that is, until Palantir took all the real estate over). It’s the former home of the Medallion Rug Gallery, which has a place of its own in Silicon Valley lore.

The store will be called LegalForce BookFlip — a new brand coming from the company that has historically specialized in online trademark search and services.

LegalForce CEO Raj Abhyanker described the store as an effort to help people “access legal services in a comfortable retail setting without being intimidated.”

Customers will be able to access attorneys on a walk-in basis for both personal and business legal topics, at a cost of $45 for 15 minutes.

As we’ve covered previously, before founding LegalForce/Trademarkia, Abhyanker started Fatdoor, and he had claimed that his name and concept were ripped off for the neighborhood social network Nextdoor.

In a letter on its website, Payvment said that it and its companion site, Lish.com, will be closed as of March 1.

Over the next month, Payvment’s customers, which operate 200,000 storefronts on Facebook, will be able to transfer their accounts to Ecwid, a San Diego-based Facebook storefront provider.

Payvment’s CEO Jim Stoneham confirmed the changes in an email, but dodged questions about what happens next to the company. Technically, he said, Payvment is not going out of business.

“I can’t comment on the company our team is joining, other than to say it’s not Ecwid,” he said. “They are partnering with us to give our customers an immediate way to keep selling. We’re committed to making sure that our customers can carry on easily.”

Update: Intuit confirmed today it is acquiring at least some of Payvment’s employees. In a statement, the financial software provider said: “Intuit has acquired a team of highly skilled developers who will be of great value to the social teams at Intuit.”

In 2011, Payvment launched a mall on Facebook at which social network users could shop among thousands of retailers and add items to a shopping cart without ever leaving the site. Last August, it launched Lish.com, which was a site off of Facebook that allowed people to shop for the products that were currently trending on the social Web.

Stoneham explained the move in October.

“Social product discovery and social commerce have very little in common with the considered purchase process … social commerce is better at delivering discovery-driven impulse purchases,” he said. “Products or services you weren’t necessarily looking for come to your attention in your social stream, you check them out and if you’re interested, you click buy.”

Now, without knowing Payvment’s exact fate, it’s difficult to speculate on why it is closing down shop on Facebook.

But Facebook’s increasing interest in retail must be one deterrent. Gifts is the social networking site’s retail initiative, which it introduced in September as a way to send physical and digital goods to any of your friends on Facebook, and it was pushed heavily over the holidays.

But despite a lot of effort, social commerce is still very much in its infancy — people aren’t primarily using Facebook or Twitter to make purchases, even if friends are influencing what they buy.

Payvment has raised almost $8 million in capital from Sierra Ventures and BlueRun Ventures.

Goldberger will become senior vice president of Target.com and Mobile, and will run all aspects of the retailer’s e-commerce business, including user experience, merchandising and analytics. He starts Feb. 11.

Last week, TechCrunch reported that Andy Page, Gilt’s president, was leaving Gilt. A spokeswoman confirmed that Page was ending his cross-country commute from San Francisco, which he’d been making weekly for the past three years.

The two departures cap a tumultuous year for Gilt, which has restructured its business several times in preparation for an initial public offering. Late last year, Gilt’s co-founder, Kevin Ryan, was replaced by Michelle Peluso, a Citigroup executive and member of Gilt’s board.

Gilt is dealing with the repercussions of its quick expansion into multiple verticals, and has not found a path to profitability in some of the niches. Some of the recent product cutbacks have included groceries and full-priced men’s clothing. It is also currently trying to sell Jetsetter, its travel division.

Gilt does not plan to fill the two new vacancies immediately. Peluso starts as CEO at the end of February, so she’ll be figuring out the right direction for the company, the spokeswoman added.

Goldberger was most recently executive vice president at Gilt, in charge of Home, Taste, Baby & Kids, and Business Development. And while Target will represent a much more corporate environment than Gilt’s startup culture, Goldberger will still face a number of challenges.

In 2011, Target’s online president left the company after the retailer’s website crashed from overwhelming demand for new designer apparel. The management change occurred soon after Target took control of its e-commerce site from Amazon.com. Since then, it has been competing fiercely with the e-commerce giant.

Earlier this month, Target announced plans to match prices from the top online retailers year-round, including Amazon.com, Walmart.com, BestBuy.com and Toysrus.com. It also said that its Target stores will match prices found at Target.com.

McDougal, who resigned earlier this month, is to be replaced by Jim Bean, formerly Apple VP of Finance. While it’s not clear if this is an exec-for-exec swap, Bean has exactly the sort of operational acumen that would lend itself to the position McDougal’s departure leaves open. Bean will retain his VP title, though “of Finance” may change to “of Retail.”

“Retail has an incredibly strong network of leaders at the store and regional level, and they will continue the excellent work they’ve done over the past decade to revolutionize retailing with unique, innovative services and a focus on the customer that is second to none,” Apple spokesman Steve Dowling said. “Jim Bean is moving to Retail to help support our store teams. Jim has been at Apple for 15 years and is a great leader who understands our culture and focus on customer service.”

McDougal’s departure and Bean’s appointment come as Apple continues its search for a retail head to replace John Browett, the former Dixons exec the company sacked last fall. McDougal, who worked closely with former Apple retail head Ron Johnson on the launch of Apple’s retail store strategy, was widely considered a candidate for that job, though is now clearly out of the running. What’s not clear is if his departure was somehow related to the search for a new SVP of retail and his candidacy for it. People with knowledge of the situation who declined to be named would say only that McDougal wanted to spend more time with his family.

News of McDougal’s resignation was first reported by IfoAppleStore.

Stopping by the Detroit Auto Show earlier this week, Tesla founder Elon Musk said one of the company’s big goals for the year is to reach profitability.

“Now, the tough thing for Tesla is to actually make a profit for the first time,” Musk said, adding that such a milestone is far more likely at the end of the year than it is now. “I’m hoping we’ll have a profitable quarter this year. Shame on us if we can’t achieve that.”

With that goal in mind, Tesla is moving forward with some agressive plans for retail expansion. The automaker intends to open 25 new stores this year. Half are to be in the United States, the other half overseas, including a Beijing store that’s expected to open its doors in the spring. Also on Tesla’s plate for the year ahead: Increasing the number of Supercharger charging stations in the U.S. to the point where Tesla owners can actually take a reasonable road trip.

NetSuite called it SuiteCommerce, and it has turned out to be a pretty big deal. In fact, one of its key partners was a smallish company called Retail Anywhere that specializes in point-of-sale terminals and software. Retail Anywhere had decided to build its next generation of POS terminals using SuiteCommerce. Retail Anywhere had created the popular Retail Anywhere point-of-sale app for Apple’s iOS devices. The two companies went to market jointly, and the result was a surprise for at least one of them. “We crushed them with demand,” NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson told me.

Today, NetSuite announced that it has bought Retail Anywhere. Financial terms aren’t being disclosed, because it’s not material to NetSuite’s finances. Nelson told me that NetSuite and Retail Anywhere had 30 joint customers, but that among its existing customer base, there are 500 companies who consider themselves retailers that could could take advantage of the combined offering. And there are thousands of existing Retail Anywhere customers — the company has been around for 28 years — who will get exposed to NetSuite.

One thing that’s not staying, Nelson said, is the point-of-sale hardware. “We’re going to get out that business,” he said. Eventually, he said, in-store retail will look a lot more like e-commerce. “More and more, you’re seeing sales reps walking around stores with iPads, swiping credit cards,” he says.

And things like that are having an effect on shoppers’ attitudes. A Deloitte survey conducted during the 2012 holiday season found that retailers who had several touchpoints through which to engage with a consumer had a 71 percent greater chance of selling to them than those who relied only on the old-school brick-and-mortar approach. What it means is that stores who can reach a customer both online and in person are more likely to sell to them. And that means you need to unify the experience. Pricing and inventory, for example, need to be in sync.

NetSuite is due to report earnings on Feb. 4 later this month. Analysts expect it to report a four-cent-per-share profit on sales of about $83 million, and for it to close its fiscal 2012 with about $307 million in sales. NetSuite shares rose at the open this morning by about 30 cents on the news, to $70.65. The shares rose by more than 66 percent in 2012.

Th firm cited Amazon’s growing network used to fulfill orders on the retail site, and raised estimates for 2016 sales to $166 billion from $145 billion. That will come as Amazon’s share of global merchandise volume, or total sales, will rise to 23.5 percent by 2016 from 14 percent last year, the firm wrote.

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Now Apple is once again on the hunt for an executive to oversee its retail stores, a keystone of the company’s success. And it can ill afford to make another such hiring mistake.

In the fourth quarter, Apple’s 401 stores worldwide generated an average revenue per store of $11.2 million, and a recent study found that Apple’s retail stores earn $6,050 per square foot, compared to Tiffany & Co., which earned $3,017 a square foot.

So who might Apple look to to fill the shoes of Ron Johnson, the chief architect of its retail strategy, who left the company last year to take the CEO job at retailer J.C. Penney? That’s a conundrum difficult enough to perplex the most skilled of recruiters; recall that it took Apple about seven months to sign Browett, and that was with the help of executive search firm Egon Zehnder International.

An easier task is to determine where Apple might look for candidates with the sort of experience needed to drive its retail ops.

“Apple’s next frontier is to really grow the brand internationally,” Neil Stern, a senior partner at retail consultancy McMillan Doolittle LLP, told AllThingsD. “So brands like Nike, Coach, Burberry and Starbucks spring to mind as being ‘models,’ perhaps, of where an individual might have that experience.”

We’ve been asking around for weeks about possible external candidates for Apple’s senior VP of retail job, and have heard largely the same thing, and a few names to boot*. They are, in no particular order:

• Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts
• Victor Luis, president, International Group, Coach
• Jeanne Jackson, president, Direct to Consumer, Nike
• John Culver, president, Starbucks Coffee China and Asia Pacific
• Paul Gainer, executive vice president, Global Disney Store

All five are well qualified. They’re working for global brands with a strong consumer focus and broad international presence. Ahrendts has spent years stewarding one of the world’s most iconic global brands. Luis has spent years steering Coach’s international operations and, crucially, served as CEO of Coach China. At Nike, Jackson is working for a company with a culture similar to Apple’s, one on whose board CEO Tim Cook serves; she also used to run Banana Republic and Walmart.com. Culver has played a key role in growing Starbucks’ global footprint in markets that are of keen interest to Apple, and has done a good job of translating the company’s culture internationally, which isn’t an easy job. Gainer has been overseeing the Disney Store since 2008, when the company reacquired it, and now directs a global retail chain that’s in many ways reminiscent of Apple’s. His boss, Disney CEO Bob Iger, sits on Apple’s board.

Good candidates, all. But would any be interested in making the jump to Apple?

Industry sources are divided on that issue. Some say the job is so high-profile that it will inevitably generate strong interest and appeal to the caliber of candidates like those above.

Others feel that the transition that a move to Apple would require of these candidates would be off-putting. “Any one of these people would be terrific for that job,” one source with close ties to Apple said. “But none of them would ever take it. They’re retail people, and Apple is not a true retailer. It’s a consumer-products company.”

Most retail CEOs come out of a merchandising background, setting a vision for the brand and selecting the product lines it will sell; creating the consumer experience and building out the merchandising, marketing, financial and operational columns that support those things is their passion. But running Apple’s retail operations these days doesn’t involve much of that. Instead, it’s about continuing to execute well on someone else’s good idea. It’s about selling the devices you’re told to sell, and selling them effectively in more markets. The real exciting stuff, the big innovation, has already happened. Apple doesn’t need a hotshot, retail problem-solver. And that may temper the job’s appeal.

As one source familiar with Apple’s retail operations said, “I’m not sure people of the caliber Apple is probably looking for would see an opportunity to add much value to the company’s retail operations — certainly not as much as they might find elsewhere.”

So, then, where does Apple turn? Does it look for retail leadership internally?

That’s certainly a possibility. And there are at least three candidates: Steve Cano, Apple’s manager of retail stores; Bob Bridger, Apple VP for retail real estate and development; and Jerry McDougal, VP of retail.

Of the three, McDougal seems the most likely, simply because he holds the VP of retail title already. But sources say that Cano would be a good pick, as well. His name has been bandied about before in relation to this job, and, according to insiders and outsiders both, he’s well-suited for it. As once source said, “Frankly, I was surprised he wasn’t tapped last time around.”

“I think Steve’s probably the best internal candidate,” Needham analyst Charlie Wolf said. “He’s the most well-rounded of those three.”

And that would seem to be the case. Cano started out as the manager of Apple’s first Soho store. Then he transferred to the company’s Ginza store in Japan to manage its opening and early days. Subsequently, he transferred to London to run international retail operations. And now he’s head of all Apple Stores.

In other words, he’s got broad in-the-field experience and, crucially, he gets Apple Store culture. Browett didn’t, and that’s among the reasons behind his ouster.

“[With Browett], clearly, there was not a cultural fit,” Stern said. “Any new head needs to fit into the Apple (and Apple Store) culture.”

And to have a strong vision for how to expand the Apple Store experience internationally, while maintaining one of its hallmarks: Good service. Sure, Apple sells a lot of hardware through its stores, but it also caters to multitudes of customers who visit seeking help at its Genius Bars. And that’s a keystone of its retail success. As one retailer said, “People underestimate just how powerful the Genius Bar is. You walk into an Apple Store with a broken iPhone, expecting a fight with some customer service rep that doesn’t know what they’re doing. But, instead, you get a Genius who diagnoses your problem on the spot. Maybe he even replaces your iPhone. Now how do you feel about Apple as you walk out of that store?”

The point: Whoever Apple taps for this job must do a good job of keeping customers happy as the business grows and work hard to ensure that, more often than not, folks who walk into an Apple Store for help walk out customers for life.

Put all those requirements together and the task of finding a candidate with the skill set to meet them becomes a tall order, indeed. Taller still, given the embarrassment of being forced to sack Browett after less than a year on the job. Apple’s next hire for this job has to be a good one. The repercussions are far too great if it’s not.

And, as Ron Johnson notes, the stakes are too high to rush a decision.

“I think Tim will take his time with this,” Johnson told AllThingsD. “The internal team is very strong and capable of running well until he finds the right person.”

Apple declined comment on its search for a new SVP of retail, noting — as it did in the press release announcing Browett’s departure — that its retail team continues to report directly to Tim Cook.

*The reply most often offered in response to this question: Ron Johnson.

With reporting by Tricia Duryee.

Nicolas Raymond / Freestock

According to comScore’s final tally for the November-December shopping season, spending for the two-month period totaled $42.3 billion, a 14 percent increase over 2011.

“This year’s growth rate is essentially on a par with last year’s,” said comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni. “But despite many positives for the online sector, this year’s season did not quite perform up to our initial expectation for growth rates in excess of 16 percent as we fell a billion dollars short of our expected total of $43.4 billion.”

The research firm, which tracks online shopping habits over broadband connections in the U.S., said a slowdown occurred after Thanksgiving due to low consumer confidence.

“As it turns out, this December swoon coincided closely with a significant decline in the University of Michigan consumer sentiment index that was attributed in large part to consumers’ fiscal cliff concerns. You might say that had it not been for Congress, every other indicator suggested it would have been an even merrier Christmas for online retailers,” Fulgoni said.

This season’s high points included some particularly outstanding days for online retailers, including Cyber Monday, Nov. 26 ($1.5 billion); Monday, Dec. 17 (up 76 percent to $1.013 billion); and Christmas Day (up 36 percent to $288 million). But those good days could not make up for three solid weeks in which the growth rates failed to surpass 12 percent.

Here’s a week-by-week breakdown of spending this season. A noticeable lull is present during the middle weeks:

This softness may have been expected based on preliminary results that some retailers released this morning. The figures indicate that sales may have been soft for many in December, not just online retailers.

For instance, Target said sales in December were flat; and Wet Seal, Macy’s and Kohl’s either cut their fourth-quarter outlooks or said quarterly results will be at or near the low end of their previous guidance range, according to MarketWatch.

Online sales are still growing at a much faster clip than retail as a whole. For instance, overall, December same-store sales, excluding drug stores, rose 4.8 percent, according to data from Retail Metrics.

While comScore’s report may be disappointing to some, it won’t affect all online retailers evenly.

For one thing, comScore’s results don’t include purchases made over mobile phones. Mobile commerce, which includes orders placed on tablets and phones through mobile browsers or applications, were a highlight for many retailers this holiday season. Second, there will be some retailers that overperformed and others that lost share.

As an example, Baird Equity Research’s Colin Sebastian raised eBay’s price target earlier today to $60, up by $2, based on evidence that eBay and PayPal excelled during the holiday season. The company’s full results will be out on Jan. 16.

And the one to watch closely will be Amazon.

Many brick-and-mortar companies resolved to fight the giant e-tailer by guaranteeing to match online prices. Whether that had any impact is still not known. Additionally, there was some question earlier this holiday season if Amazon was performing as well as expected.

Wells Fargo Analyst Matt Nemer said that for the first time in years, Amazon was giving some customers coupons for 10 percent off their orders. But it was unclear whether Amazon was only trying to reactivate old customers or if it was doing it because sales were short. Another plausible reason was that customers were procrastinating. Amazon allowed some customers to order as late as Dec. 21 with the promise of delivery by Dec. 24, which may have delayed some purchases.

People have become accustomed to this idea of instant gratification, where you just type something on your phone and the next thing you know, you have what you need.

– TaskRabbit spokesperson Johnny Brackett, talking to the New York Times about retailers’ attempts to offer same-day shipping.