Nike's new six-story, 68,000-square-foot, tech-driven New York City flagship caters to consumers' cravings for both convenience and experience. The store includes a "Speed Shop" that allows shoppers to reserve items online and retrieve them from lockers in the store, an entire floor for sneakers, and mannequins outfitted with QR codes that app users can scan to learn about products and have merchandise delivered to a dressing room.

Walmart raised its full-year forecast after beating third-quarter growth estimates, and now expects the year's same-store sales to grow at least 3% in the US, the company said. "We feel good about our competitive position heading into the holiday season," Chief Financial Officer Brett Biggs said.

David's Bridal has negotiated a restructuring deal with lenders that will cut upward of $400 million in debt through a bankruptcy filing, the retailer said Thursday. Lenders will provide about $40 million in financing, and more than 300 David's Bridal stores will operate as usual during the restructuring, the company said.

Williams-Sonoma will partner with Reliance Brands to open its first Pottery Barn and West Elm stores in India in 2020, the companies said. The announcement comes three months after IKEA launched its first store in the country.

Retailers are competing fiercely for seasonal employees in a tight labor market, and some are snapping up new staffers sight unseen after phone interviews. Macy's, which hires about one-third of its new store employees within 48 hours, aims to do more phone interview hiring, a spokeswoman said.

Startup Fourpost is betting on the future of brick-and-mortar retail and helping small merchants create a physical retail presence. Fourpost has opened its first two locations at the Mall of America and Canada's West Edmonton Mall, where it will offer space for 30 brands, many of which are local.

The Sam's Club Now location in the Dallas-Fort Worth market, one-fourth the size of the usual club retail site, has embraced virtual reality and other technology to make the shopping experience more seamless. In fact, scan-and-go shopping that skips checkout is the only way to buy in the test store.

About 47.3 million American adults have access to Amazon's Alexa and other voice assistants, according to a Voicebot.ai survey. As the technology and consumers' use of it grows more sophisticated, brands and retailers are using the data collected to add value with personal recommendations and expand sales into new categories.

More than 164 million Americans plan to shop during Thanksgiving weekend, according to NRF's annual survey conducted by Prosper Insights & Analytics. The numbers include Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday. See the data.

An estimated 68 million consumers plan to shop on Small Business Saturday this year. Source: NRF/Prosper Insights and Analytics.

Three years after the switch to new EMV credit and debit cards, fraud is still a top problem for large US retailers, according to a study released by NRF and Forrester. The State of Retail Payments report says the reason is that the chip-based cards have shifted fraud away from stores and toward online transactions. Read more.

Panera Bread will offer breakfast delivery from 381 restaurants by the end of the year, in markets including Washington, D.C., Dallas and Chicago, the company said. Digital channels now account for about one-third of Panera's total sales and breakfast delivery is expected to drive further growth.