California Apparel News

Macy’s, Mood Media, and Shopkick, a location- based shopping app that rewards shoppers for walking into stores and interacting with products, have launched a national rollout of the Shopkick app at more than 800 Macy’s stores this month, the retailer announced in a company statement.

Shoppers can earn discounts for walking into any Macy’s store and instantly receive deals and offers to their smartphone through the Shopkick app.

“At Macy’s, we’re dedicated to being an omni-channel innovator, so our customers can always benefit from the latest and greatest technology. We were one of Shopkick’s inaugural partners, initially offering this innovative application in select markets in 2010,” said Martine Reardon, Macy’s chief marketing officer.

“With this national rollout less than two years later, we are continuing to bolster mobile efforts that enhance the shopping experience in our stores while creating an immediate and personal interaction with our customers.”

The national expansion brings Shopkick from five regions during Macy’s initial launch in 2010 to the full range of Macy’s stores across the nation, which adds more than 50 new markets to the program.

“Macy’s was among the first to truly embrace mobile as the future, and its rapid expansion of Shopkick will, no doubt, have a positive impact for all partner retailers because where there’s a Macy’s, there are shoppers,” said Doug Galen, Shopkick’s chief revenue officer.

When a shopper enters a store, the Shopkick app detects a Shopkick signal emitted from a device located in the store and picked up by a shopper’s smartphone. It then delivers “kicks” via the app, which can be redeemed for in-store gift cards, song downloads, movie tickets, Facebook credits and donations to charities.

Shopkick was first launched in 2010. More than 7,000 individual stores have deployed Shopkick’s technology, according to the technology provider.

The Palo Alto, Calif.–based startup is funded by the global investment firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers; the Silicon Valley, Calif.–based venture-capital firm Greylock Partners; and by Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn and an investor in Facebook and Zynga.

The rollout was executed by the Canadian company Mood Media Corp., an in-store media- solutions provider.

“We’ve developed a technique that requires little more than approval from the retailer, and then it can be live with Shopkick in no time,” said Mark Elfenbein, Mood Media Corp.’s chief business-development officer.

Shopkick is available for free from the iPhone App Store, as well as at the Android Market. —Deidre Crawford