Bucks Blog: Online Shopping, With Sales Tax Added

Isaac Brekken for The New York Times A shopper compares prices online.

Attention, all you online shoppers out there: your sales-tax-free party may soon be over.

The Senate is set to vote on the “Marketplace Fairness Act,” legislation that would help states force online retailers to collect sales taxes for Internet purchases.

The measure, supported by some revenue-hungry states, as well as brick and mortar merchants who say it would eliminate an unfair advantage for online sellers, is expected to be voted on by the Senate this week. It must then, of course, be considered by the House of Representatives.

If the proposal becomes law, a perk of online shopping would go away and shoppers would pay the sales taxes to the online retailer at the time of purchase — just as they do now in physical stores. Some of the biggest online retailers, like Amazon.com, have already started collecting them.

“The free ride is almost over,” Edgar Dworsky, publisher of Consumer World, said in an e-mail. “Shoppers will now have to figure in sales tax when they are deciding whether it is better to buy a particular item online or in a brick-and-mortar store.”

Right now, Internet sellers must collect state sales taxes on online sales only if the seller has a “physical presence” — like a store, or distribution center — in the state. But consumers are still technically subject to the tax in many states — a fact that may come as a surprise to many online shoppers. It’s often called a “use” tax, because it is levied on an item you bought out of state but you “use” in your home state.

In Florida, for instance, the state Department of Revenue’s Web site says online purchases are subject to the state’s 6 percent sales tax, even if the seller doesn’t collect it at time of purchase. Florida consumers are supposed to fill out an “out-of-state purchase return,” also known as a Form DR-15MO, and mail the payment directly to the state.

But few consumers are even aware of such requirements, said Stephen Schatz, a spokesman for the National Retail Federation, which represents large retailers and supports the legislation. The proposed law, he said, “shifts compliance from consumers, who aren’t complying or are complying minimally, to the retailer.”

He added that the law would require states to streamline their sales tax processes and take other steps to ease the burden on retailers.

It doesn’t seem to me that the law is lifting much of a burden from consumers, though. It just seems that we’ll be paying more when buying some things online. Sigh.

Of course, there’s still the attraction of shopping online in your pajamas and then having your purchase delivered to your door, often with “free shipping” thrown into the bargain. For that reason, I suspect I’ll still shop online as much as I did before, if the measure becomes law. (A report from Forrester Research says consumer behavior is unlikely to change much because of the addition of online sales taxes.)

Jack Gillis, a spokesman for the Consumer Federation of America, agreed. “People shop on the Internet for so many more reasons than to avoid taxes,” he said in an e-mail, so taxing online purchases will probably have little effect on purchase behavior. Online sellers might even offer better shipping deals or lower prices to lessen the impact, he said.

What do you think? Would broader collection of sales taxes make you shop online less?

Consignment Shopping, With Confidence, on the Web

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Strategies: A Holiday Shopping Stampede, but Maybe No Economic Jolt

THE holiday shopping season started early, and with a roar. Whether that will help the sagging economy is another matter.

“Spending may well be strong, and that could help us get through another Christmas,” said William R. Emmons, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. “But the economy is unbalanced and we’re still in an enormous crisis.”

So, despite the early crowds at shopping malls, it’s worth noting that much of the consumption is being financed indirectly — through the expansive monetary policies of the Fed, and through deficit spending that has created an enormous budget gap. “At some point, we can’t go on like this,” Mr. Emmons said.

For now, the nation’s retailers are doing their best to infuse the holidays with the spirit of consuming. “Door-busting” bargains began on Thanksgiving Day instead of on Black Friday, as had been the custom. Online discounts started weeks ago, and Cyber Monday, formerly a one-day event, is morphing into a consumption extravaganza unbound by space or time.

“We’re keeping the Cyber Monday party going all week long,” Amazon.com said on its site on Thursday afternoon. Walmart declared that its site was “the only place to go” for Cyber Week. “Shop now while supplies last,” it said. And Target offered rapture: “Get online-only deals all week. Oh joy!”

Over all, the efforts have yielded a mixed harvest. Some reports suggest that the early shopping has been robust, if not extraordinary. A survey for the National Retail Federation found that 247 million people did some shopping in the four days starting on Thanksgiving, up 9.2 percent from last year. Total spending reached $59.1 billion, up nearly 13 percent.

But a report on Thursday showed that overall sales at 16 retailers — including chains like Macy’s, Nordstrom, Kohl’s and Target — increased only 1.6 percent in November for stores open at least a year. Those figures included early holiday sales.

Furthermore, the financial crisis, the recession and the anemic recovery have constrained the appetites of many voracious consumers.

“History shows that people only have so much money to spend during the holidays,” said Paul Dales, an economist at Capital Economics, a private forecasting group. “And if they spend more of it on Black Friday, they’ll probably spend less of it later in the season.”

In other words, while the hoopla of early sales may offer hints about the competitive advantages of specific retailers — Amazon.com or Walmart, for example — it may not mean much about consumer spending as a whole.

Real income is stagnating, and consumer spending dropped 0.2 percent in October, the Commerce Department reported on Friday. Even so, consumer spending accounts for 70.6 percent of gross domestic product, Mr. Emmons said — a higher proportion than before the recession. That suggests a predicament for policy makers, he said, because high levels of consumer spending are associated with a relatively low pace of economic growth.

The economy needs more exports and investment, and less consumer spending, he said. “We really could use a consumption tax to help increase household saving,” he said. But with the economy as weak as it is, he acknowledged, such a tax would not be very popular in Washington.

Consumption during the holidays should be curbed for ecological, cultural and ethical reasons, said Kalle Lasn, co-founder of the Adbusters Media Foundation. He advocates transforming Black Friday into Buy Nothing Day — “a day to return to the roots of the holiday, to the frugality — to living lightly — which is really the essence of Christianity and of all great religions.” Mr. Lasn, who helped start the Occupy Wall Street movement, called overconsumption a cause of climate change and other ills. “It needs to stop,” he said, “before we destroy this planet.”

But efforts to curb consumer spending, especially in the holiday season, may run counter to deep habits and traditions. American holidays have been defined by an uneasy alliance among business, religion and politics, said Leigh Eric Schmidt, author of “Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays.”

“Commerce and religion and patriotism are all part of what we have come to know as the holidays,” said Mr. Schmidt, a professor of humanities at Washington University in St. Louis.

“Consumption during the holiday season has come to have a kind of patriotic quality in the United States,” he said. In fact, extending the holiday season, and exhorting people to spend, has sometimes been a matter of public policy.

IN 1939, during the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt called Thanksgiving “a perfectly movable feast” — and he moved up the holiday by one week, from its traditional date on the last Thursday of November. He thus proclaimed that Thanksgiving would be on Nov. 23 that year, not Nov. 30.

His agenda was transparent. The economy needed help. As an experiment, he said, he would try to give retailers a boost by extending the holiday season. But public opinion was no more unified then than it is now, and his policy was not universally welcomed.

The New York Times of Aug. 15, 1939, captured the mood: “Roosevelt to Move Thanksgiving; Retailers for It, Plymouth Is Not. Football Schedule Makers Also Get a Headache, With Season Set to End With Fifth Thursday in November.”

The president’s home state, New York, went along with the change, but Connecticut was among many that didn’t. Families were divided. Eleanor Lucy Blydenburgh, a student at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, said that while her school holiday would be Nov. 23, her parents would celebrate on Nov. 30. “Really, this situation makes my heart ache,” she wrote the president, in a letter held by the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library.

What’s more, as Roosevelt ruefully acknowledged in 1941, the extra days didn’t stimulate the economy. There was no net increase in sales. “The experiment had not worked,” The Times reported in May 1941. People shifted their shopping days but didn’t buy more.

Congress resolved the issue in time for Thanksgiving in 1942. It legislated that the holiday would henceforth be on November’s fourth Thursday, which isn’t always the last one.

That’s why Thanksgiving this year was on Nov. 22, not last Thursday. So, once again, there are extra shopping days, as well as endless consumption opportunities online — and reason to doubt that they will mean much for the economy.

Tool Kit: Online Shopping Tips for the Holidays

But for those who prefer to stay for the pie course, avoid the lines and freezing temperatures and shop from the comfort of their homes, there are just as many deals to be found online this year, especially for smart shoppers.

Last year, online shoppers spent $816 million on Black Friday, an increase of 26 percent from the year before, and an additional $2.3 billion over Thanksgiving weekend and Cyber Monday, according to comScore. It expects online spending to rise this year.

Online, there is no commute, no parking and no crowds — and shopping can be done in bed or at the Thanksgiving dinner table. Still, you cannot try clothes on, you have to wait for your purchase to arrive and there is always the nagging feeling that a better price is just one more click away.

To find your way around those problems, here are some tips from online shopping pros, retailers and shopping bloggers.

BARGAINS START EARLY “Cyber Monday is passé,” said Fiona Dias, chief strategy officer for ShopRunner.com, a network of e-commerce sites. “With online sales beginning as early as the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, consumers who hold out for the best deal may find that what they are looking for has already sold out.”

Amazon.com, for example, started its Black Friday deals on Monday, but they end Saturday. SHOP ON TUESDAYS One of the secrets of online shopping is that prices change by the second. To maximize your chances of getting the best price year-round, shop on Tuesday, a variety of e-commerce experts say. For whatever reason, Tuesday is when most e-commerce sites, including Shopbop, Etsy and RetailMeNot, post discounts and new items.

No matter the day, online retailers often start sales in the wee hours, so shop early.

As for the time of year, women’s clothes, shoes and accessories are discounted most in January, February, August and September, according to Shop It To Me, an online shopping search site. For consumer electronics like laptops, shop in midsummer and late September, before and after the back-to-school rush, according to Decide.com, a price comparison site.

NEVER PAY FULL PRICE Online holiday shoppers should use 40 percent off as a benchmark for a good deal, said Marjorie Cader, a Shop It To Me spokeswoman, based on discount data the site has collected. Expect discounts that are about 5 percent better from online-only retailers than from those that also operate brick and mortar stores, she said.

Comparison shopping sites like TheFind or ShopStyle can locate the best prices; Google or coupon sites like RetailMeNot can also help find a discount.

Google, Amazon and even flash sale sites like Gilt.com do not always have the lowest prices. You might check small shopping blogs dedicated to your favorite brands, like Grechen’s Closet for contemporary women’s clothes or J. Crew Aficionada.

“Spend 20 minutes and ensure you are getting the best deal out there,” said John Faith, senior vice president of mobile at WhaleShark Media, which operates coupon sites, including RetailMeNot.

BE A HAGGLER This is the year haggling at the cash register could become acceptable, as offline retailers try to keep shoppers offline. If you find a better price online — by using an application like RedLaser or searching Amazon — ask whether the cashier will match it. Big retailers like Target have already said they will.

WAIT TILL THE LAST MINUTE Procrastinators might benefit during the holidays. Electronics sold online are least expensive in the week before Christmas, according to Decide, especially TVs, laptops and cameras.

And while Dec. 17 is the last day that most online retailers will offer free shipping in time for Christmas, Walmart, the luxury clothing seller Net-a-Porter and others will deliver the same day. In San Francisco and New York, eBay now offers same-day delivery from hundreds of stores, including Macy’s, Target and Toys “R” Us.

NEVER PAY FOR SHIPPING... Nine of ten retailers will offer free shipping on certain purchases this holiday season, and a third will offer free shipping on all purchases, according to the National Retail Federation.

Some, though, require that you enter a promotional code, so it’s wise to take a minute to look around the Web site or search a coupon site to find it.

Stores including Walmart, Toys “R” Us and Nordstrom allow you to shop online and pick up your order locally.

...OR FOR RETURNS Sites like Zappos.com and Piperlime send prepaid shipping labels, but beware.

“When it comes to returns, read the fine print,” said Brian Hoyt, a spokesman for WhaleShark Media. Some merchants include a prepaid return label but subtract the price from your refund, and others charge a restocking fee as high as 30 percent for consumer electronics.

Many companies, including Gap and J. Crew, also let you return an online purchase to a local store. And until Dec. 31, PayPal will cover the return shipping cost if the merchant does not, as long as you pay with PayPal and make the return within 30 days.

SEARCH WISELY Try searching synonyms, like “coat” instead of “jacket.” On sites like eBay, try leaving out words — if you are looking for an Yves Saint Laurent handbag on eBay, search for “Saint Laurent” or “Laurent bag.”

“If you search for ‘Yves Saint Laurent,’ you’ll be fighting over pieces with a bigger group of people,” said Sophia Amoruso, founder and chief executive of the e-commerce retailer Nasty Gal, who suggested purposefully misspelling brand names as well. “Think of what an uninformed person might list a really great designer piece as, and you can get an amazing gem for an incredible price.”

EBay Fashion also lets shoppers search by taking a cellphone picture of a fabric to find similar designs.

GET INSPIRED Search for “black sequin dress,” and you’ll get 128 results on Zappos.com, 2,618 on Amazon.com and a truly overwhelming 18 million on Google.

One solution: Trust online curators to suggest items. Etsy creates lists of recommended items. On Pinterest, you can peruse items culled by others. Other sites to search for inspiration: Polvyore, Fancy, Svpply, Lookbook.nu and We Heart It.

TRY IT ON, VIRTUALLY You can visit sites that show real people wearing the clothes you’re interested in buying, like Go Try It On, Fashism and Rent the Runway and sites that show video, including Asos, MyHabit and Joyus. Or, as long as a site offers free shipping and returns, order two sizes and return one.

SHOP INTERNATIONALLY “Don’t let international shopping scare you off,” said Caroline Nolan, the writer of Pregnant Fashionista, a maternity shopping blog.

Many international e-commerce sites, like Asos, ship free to the United States. And because the seasons are different, winter clothes in Australia, for instance, go on sale just as Americans are starting to shop for winter, she said. FarFetch has items from small boutiques worldwide and 1stDibs is good at finding rare items like an antique from Paris. On eBay, you might have luck finding items made by a European designer by switching to eBay’s site for a particular country.

MAKE SITES WORK FOR YOU On Shop It To Me, you can enter your favorite designers and sizes and the site will send you personalized e-mails with promotions and sales. Many sites allow shoppers to place a symbol like a heart on best-liked items or save them to a wish list. On a site like Pinterest, shoppers can build a list.

“You always think you’ll remember where you saw something or what brand it was, but really you never do,” said Noria Morales, style director at SugarInc, a network of fashion and lifestyle blogs.

Even better, sites like Shopbop and Polyvore send alerts when items you have saved go on sale or are running low. EBay sends alerts when new items are listed for a search you have saved.

BE DILIGENT No one has time to read 50 e-mails a day from retailers. But for your favorite e-commerce sites, it is worth signing up for e-mails, as well as tracking them on Facebook and Twitter, where they often post exclusive deals. Many online shoppers have more luck hunting for items than trusting services to send alerts, said Grechen Reiter, owner of Grechen Media, a network of shopping blogs.

“It is the thrill of the hunt that gets us going, after all,” she said.

Shopping Sites Pay Contributors Who Drive Traffic to Retailers

Ms. Medeiros is not a style pro; her day job is at a talent agency in Manhattan. But in a little-known practice, social media shopping sites are offering payments to shoppers who post product links that drive Web traffic and sales to retailers.

In the case of Ms. Medeiros, it is the sneakers and lipstick she added to Pinterest and the night life collection she posted on the shopping site Beso.

Favorable mentions on blogs have been for sale for years. Product reviews can also be bought. Now social media sites are taking citizen marketing to a new extreme, turning anyone’s Twitter message, Facebook post, Pinterest image or e-mail into a possible paid promotion.

The shopping sites are open about the moneymaking mechanics and argue that readers no longer expect everything online to be commercial-free. But the Federal Trade Commission says the practice blurs the line between a recommendation and a paid endorsement and needs to be flagged to readers.

“It’s turning word of mouth into a revenue opportunity,” said Mary Engle, who directs the commission’s division of advertising practices. “Since they’re getting compensated, in a sense, for their endorsement, then they should disclose that.”

Social media shopping sites let users select items from across the Web and share and comment on other users’ selections. They don’t sell anything themselves but make money by taking a cut from retailers on their sites.

Beso formally introduced a program on Tuesday that Ms. Medeiros has been trying, which pays users to send clicks to hundreds of major retailers, like Target and Gap.

“If they drop a link onto Twitter about a pair of shoes that they’re dying for, or a new handbag they’re coveting, and they refer users to Neiman’s or whoever sells that item,” said David Weinrot, the chief marketing officer for Shopzilla, the parent company of Beso, “they could actually be rewarded.”

Other large social shopping sites and apps, including the Fancy and Pose, recently introduced similar programs, and Referly, a site introduced in May, is entirely based on people referring products to friends and receiving money in return. Referly says 10,000 people have already signed up. The programs are too new to evaluate their financial success, but Web marketers say consumers should expect more similar programs, in part because visitors are no longer offended by the idea.

“The economic maturity of consumers is, businesses need to make money somehow if they’re going to survive — it’s so ubiquitous now that it’s expected,” said Alicia Navarro, co-founder and chief executive of Skimlinks, which automates referral links for publishers.

The sites determine who gets paid through unique links created for each participant. When someone uses a link to visit a retailer’s site, or buys a product, a payment is deposited into the referring user’s account. The practice is known as affiliate marketing. Bloggers already use the system and almost all major online retailers are willing to pay for traffic or purchases, Ms. Navarro said.

Links can be tracked no matter where a post occurs, meaning a Twitter message, a photo on Pinterest or a Facebook entry can all generate revenue. The social media shopping sites act as a middle man, collecting fees from the retailers and depositing payments into the users’ online accounts — after taking a cut. (Sometimes, sites cut out consumers, too. Earlier this year, Pinterest got into hot water when it quietly adjusted some users’ links to become affiliate-marketing links, and seemed to be collecting all the revenue for itself. It says it has ceased using affiliate links and declined to comment on whether it would offer users fees from such links in the future.)

Beso pays users an average of 14 cents for each click they send to participating retailers, while other companies, like Pose, pay only when a purchase is associated with a link. Payments for purchases average about 5 percent of the price, Ms. Navarro said. The sites and the retailers monitor for spamlike behavior, like tons of clicks from a single I.P. address, and do not pay in those cases.

Lynsey Eaton, a Pose user who runs the blog Law of Fashion, said switching to the paid model for Pose images had made her more likely to post Pose links, and had made the service more useful. “Instead of just making it an Instagram for fashion, it’s now shoppable as well,” she said.

The Federal Trade Commission issued guidelines in 2009 saying bloggers must disclose any paid endorsements, and recently updated them. The guidelines apply to these commission-based links, Ms. Engle of the commission’s advertising division said, whether they are in a post or a 140-character Twitter post. “They can use a hashtag and then ‘ad,’ and that’s only three characters,” Ms. Engle said.

But there is some disagreement about whether a Twitter post should be treated like a blogger’s recommendation and about the changing expectations of financial disclosure on the Web.

Linda Goldstein, a lawyer specializing in advertising, said when the F.T.C. issued its blogger guidelines, “consumers were much less sophisticated” than they are today. “Consumers are now being used to generate leads — I don’t know if that raises the same concerns as an endorsement,” said Ms. Goldstein of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips. “You’re not expressing an opinion about the product, you’re sending it to someone you think might be interested.”

Twitter and Facebook policies allow individuals to post referral-based links, but both companies say users should disclose that they are getting paid.

So far, the social media companies and their users seem to be largely unaware of how the guidelines apply to them.

Dustin Rosen, chief executive of Pose, said he was not clear on whether the guidelines would apply. Beso says its users should add hashtags like #spon, for sponsored, or #paid to links, but stops short of requiring it. Ms. Eaton, the Pose user, says she follows disclosure guidelines on her blog but has not yet done so on Pose. “I think this is so new that I haven’t really honestly thought about how users perceive the fact that people are making money,” she said.

Ms. Medeiros, who signed up for the Beso pilot program about a month ago, says she doubts that her friends will mind that she makes money from her links.

“It’s extra cash for something that I like doing,” she said. “It’s sort of rewarding to be able to make a few cents from sharing your personal life.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: October 2, 2012

An earlier version of a picture caption with this article misstated the name of a social media shopping site that is offering payments to users who drive Web traffic to some retailers. It is Beso, not Bezos.

Bits Blog: Amazon Starts a Shopping Site for the Environmental Crowd

Amazon.com is going after the environmental crowd with a new site called Vine.com for buying green products.

Vine is part of Quidsi, the company that Amazon bought in 2010 that also runs sites like Diapers.com (baby stuff), Wag.com (pets) and YoYo.com (toys). Vine will sell everything from cleaning supplies to baby accessories, beauty supplies and clothes — as long as they are green.

That means wildly different things to different people, but Vine has created its own formula. Products must fall into one of the following categories: they must be designed to remove toxins, energy-efficient, natural, organic, powered by renewable energy, reusable, made of sustainable materials or water-efficient.

For example, bamboo cutting boards make the list because bamboo is sustainable. So do reusable cloth diapers, organic cotton bedding, low-flow shower heads, water filter pitchers and paraben-free cosmetics.

“This is a site that is not necessarily about saving the planet, though we feel the products are useful in that regard,” said Josh Dorfman, the site leader, who previously created the Lazy Environmentalist books and radio and TV shows. “It’s really saying to mom, ‘If you care about raising safe and healthy kids and you feel green products without chemicals can help along the way, we’ve figured out ways to help you do that.’”

A package that says natural is not enough, Mr. Dorfman said. Vine has asked vendors to verify that their products meet certain standards and has scanned ingredient lists to make sure they do not contain banned substances. Seventh Generation is an initial sponsor on the site.

Vine is catering to other civic-minded shopping trends, too, with sections stocked with fair trade products or products made within 100 miles of a shopper’s home.

None of this squares with the way people typically think of Amazon and the other e-commerce sites that it owns. Some small, local retailers say Amazon puts them out of business. Huge amounts of energy are spent operating warehouses, shipping products and wrapping them in bubble wrap and cardboard boxes.

“It’s a fair point that no matter how you’re going to engage in commerce, there’s going to be an environmental impact,” Mr. Dorfman said. “We’re not promising to be the greenest company right away, and we’re owning up to the fact that it’s not the way we operate across the entire company.”

It won’t be obvious on Vine.com that shoppers are buying from Amazon, just like on other e-commerce sites that Amazon owns, including Zappos.com, Shopbop.com and Woot. But it is another instance of Amazon’s spider-like reach in the online retailing world in its quest to sell people anything they want to buy.

Like Diapers.com and Quidsi’s other sites, Vine will deliver in one or two days, with the help of robots that pack boxes in the warehouse within minutes of an online order, and will emphasize customer service and easy returns. And Vine shoppers who just want a tube of Crest toothpaste or nonrecycled toilet paper can add items from other Quidsi sites to their shopping carts.

Shopping With Lucky Will Soon Require Less Clicking

On Aug. 17, the magazine will introduce a shopping site called myLucky.com that will direct readers to buy clothing and accessories directly from more than a dozen retailers like Macy’s and Sephora.

Instead of directing shoppers to store sites to buy items, a shopper never has to leave the myLucky site and can keep items from multiple stores in her shopping cart. Shoppers also can click on mylucky versions of Web sites like Macy’s, only with a narrower list of merchandise organized by Lucky editors.

“What we are trying to do is give them the world of options,” said Brandon Holley, the magazine’s editor in chief, as she sat in her Midtown office surrounded by images of the proposed site designs. “She needs choice. She needs diversity.”

Lucky is the latest magazine to look to e-commerce to buttress its income. The magazine’s revenue from advertising pages declined by 15 percent in the second quarter to $29 million compared with $34 million the same time the year before, according to MPA’s Publishers Information Bureau. Lucky’s circulation declined to 1.12 million from 1.16 million in the last four years, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

Ms. Holley hopes that its shopping component will become a bigger part of revenue in the future. The magazine is already working on revenue-sharing relationships with the retailers it is working with and expects to get roughly 3 percent to 15 percent of every sale.

“There’s a huge opportunity for revenue and traffic growth,” Ms. Holley said.

The magazine hired three staff members to help with its plans. To accompany its participating retailers, Lucky plans to increase its number of online posts from 30 a day to 120 a day. Lucky editors will depend heavily on contributions from the online community of bloggers it has been developing.

Lucky also is offering the expertise of its editors to help readers. Shoppers now can send a question to Lucky asking for advice on their shopping decisions, such as what items they should keep or remove from their shopping basket. Lucky executives stress that what they are doing is new because they let readers shop from a range of retailers.

But the recent partnerships that other magazines have tried with retailers are sobering. In the past year, several major magazines threw aside the traditional church-and-state divisions that existed between editorial and advertising and tried trial partnerships with e-commerce sites to sell clothing.

Esquire Magazine, which worked with J.C. Penney to start a Web site called Cladmen.com that sold items appearing in the magazine, closed the site a couple of months afterward. Details did not renew the one-year relationship it started last August to sell clothing on Mr. Porter, the men’s version of Net-a-Porter.

GQ, which had a six-month relationship with Park & Bond, an e-commerce site for designer men’s wear, in July formed a new relationship with Nordstrom to sell clothing selected by GQ editors on NordstromMen.com. Vogue is one of the few magazines continuing its relationship with Moda Operandi, which allows shoppers to preorder looks from runway shows.

Ms. Holley said she had ignored most other magazines when coming up with this design. She studied shopping Web sites like Gucci, Anthropologie and Kate Spade. She sought help from a Silicon Valley-based company called Revel Touch that advised Anthropologie on its site.

She also gathered a lot of research about what Lucky readers want from shopping. She found that 70 percent of Lucky subscribers wanted to compare prices before they bought and 43 percent welcomed “personal style tutorials” when they were shopping. That further convinced Ms. Holley that the magazine had to offer relationships with many retailers and pair it with Lucky editorial content.

“Can you imagine going to the mall and only shopping in one corner of the shop?” she asked. “That’s what a lot of magazines did.”

Ms. Holley said she had wanted to make sure not to betray the trust of Lucky readers by ever recommending certain products over others because of these new financial relationships. She said that as Lucky establishes relationships with lots of retailers, Lucky will have a certain scale of relationships that makes this seem less of a problem. She plans to continue to feature just as many less well-known designers in the magazine as in the past who may not make lucrative business partners because she would lose her loyal following of readers if she did not.

“For me, what would be a problem is if we were pushing things if we were making money,” Ms. Holley said.

Lucky editors plan to introduce the entire shopping program with their September digital edition. Ms. Holley said in her September editor’s note that since the magazine started working on its digital editions, she has been tempted to shop more. (She recently bought a $620 A.P.C. and Vanessa Seward golden tunic and a $468 floaty BCBG dress with a geometric pattern that are on the new app.) In October, Lucky is also introducing an online sticker program that lets shoppers attach the stickers it has in its magazine to flag items now on any Web sites.

John Parham, a brand consultant who helped Teen Vogue partner with Macy’s on a merchandise agreement and Better Homes and Gardens link up with Walmart to sell home goods, said that since most shopping still takes place in stores, magazines often make more money when they create their own merchandise. But he also thinks the Lucky brand carries enough authority with shoppers that its shopping project has a lot of potential.

“Lucky is essentially doing what they do best,” Mr. Parham said.

Lucky’s publisher, Marcy Bloom, said that this new shopping component is different from any of these other merchandising relationships.

“We are looking at our business with a much larger lens than the standard magazine business,” she said.

DealBook Column: Suggestions for an Apple Shopping List

David Paul Morris/Bloomberg NewsTim Cook, left, chief of Apple, and Paul Sagan, chief of Akamai Technologies, at the Sun Valley conference.

Question: What would you do if you had $117 billion?

That’s the challenge facing Tim Cook, Apple’s chief, whose company’s cash hoard keeps growing — by about $1 billion a week.

He could hold onto it. He could increase Apple’s dividend, which he instituted this year for the first time.

Or he could spend it.

Just last week, Mr. Cook acquired AuthenTec, a mobile security company, for $356 million in cash — a price equal to pocket lint for a company with the war chest the size of Apple’s.

The real question is whether Mr. Cook would ever spend Apple’s money on an “elephant” — Wall Street parlance for a huge deal.

Apple denizens often say that the company is not interested in deal making. It has, after all, invented some of today’s most successful consumer products. But that view misunderstands Apple’s history: some of its most important innovations were not invented within Apple; they were purchased from other companies.

For example, the touch-sensitive gesture technology that made the iPhone and iPad possible was invented and patented by FingerWorks, which Apple acquired in 2005. Siri? Apple bought it in 2010. Even Apple’s current Macintosh operating system was an acquisition of sorts. It is built on the back of NeXT, acquired from Steve Jobs (they got him to return as part of the deal, too) in 1996. (Pixar, Mr. Jobs’s other big success, was an acquisition as well. He bought the company from George Lucas as part of a spinoff from Lucasfilm in 1986.)

A year before Mr. Jobs died, he strongly hinted that Apple would consider a big deal. “We strongly believe that one or more very strategic opportunities may come along, that we are in a unique position to take advantage of because of our strong cash position,” Mr. Jobs said in a call with analysts in 2010.

Having all that money can be daunting, so to help Mr. Cook, here is a potential shopping list — some must-buys and some pie-in-the-sky targets — that he may want to consider:

NUANCE This is the one no-brainer on the list. Nuance, based in Burlington, Mass., provides much of the speech recognition technology behind Apple’s Siri and dictation functions. Right now, Apple has merely licensed it and integrated it into both its mobile devices like iPhones and iPads as well as its new Macintosh operating system. Most users think it is Apple technology, but those services wouldn’t work without Nuance.

It should go without saying, but the importance of speech recognition is only going to increase in the future. Nuance has more patents for it and has developed the technology further than just about any firm in the world. At some point, Nuance will be able to hold Apple for ransom. Google and Microsoft are steadily building their own speech recognition technologies and they are catching up quickly. Nuance’s market value is $6.3 billion. Even if Apple paid twice as much, it would be a worthwhile investment.

TWITTER AND PATH Consider this a one-two punch. Apple should buy the social media companies Twitter and Path. Twitter is well known. The 140-character Twitterverse now has more than 140 million active monthly users. It is one of the few, if only, independent social media properties that could allow Apple to build its own social media platform to truly compete against the likes of Facebook and Google.

Twitter’s price tag is just north of $10 billion, and as my colleagues Evelyn M. Rusli and Nick Bilton reported in The New York Times last week, the idea has certainly crossed the minds of Apple executives.

Path is less familiar, but it would be an integral ingredient for Apple’s push into social media. Path is a fast-growing social media company that works on mobile devices only. It has cracked the code on making the mobile experience of sharing with friends enjoyable. Path would probably cost $250 million to $1 billion. If Apple were to stir together Twitter, Path and its own Photo Stream service — and leveraged all the data it has collected about its users over the years (while mindful of privacy issues) — the company would have quite a product that would keep consumers hooked.

RESEARCH IN MOTION Yes, this one may be a head-scratcher, considering that the iPhone seems to have eaten RIM’s BlackBerry for breakfast — and lunch. But with a marke value of $3.7 billion it is a relative bargain and could be had for four weeks’ worth of Apple’s spare cash).

Such a deal would instantly put Apple into the enterprise market, giving it access to corporate and government customers that require RIM’s highly secure servers. Apple could build access into RIM’s network directly into future iPhones and maybe even create an iPhone with BlackBerry’s famous keyboard, which for many of us would create the ultimate smartphone.

RIM’s relationships with corporate and government customers could be leveraged to sell other products like computers and iPads. RIM also owns QNX, a software that is being used in its next-generation BlackBerry devices. More important for Apple, QNX is used as an in-dashboard operating system, and it is already in 20 million cars, like Chryslers and Porsches.

Finally, there are RIM’s patents, said to be worth $1 billion to $4 billion alone, a virtual treasure trove for a company that is locked in brutal patent wars with rivals. Google paid $12.5 billion for Motorola Mobility last year, in part, to secure the company’s patent portfolio.

SQUARE Everyone is talking about the mobile wallet. Square, started by the Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, has created a unique new electronic payment system though iPhones and iPads. The next time you go to a coffee shop, there is a chance you can pay with your iPhone simply by saying your name when you get to the cash register.

Square’s value has crept up to more than $3 billion, which is high for a company that is still losing money. But if Apple could integrate Square into iTunes — which has over 400 million active credit cards on file from around the world — it could become a sensation overnight, pushing out rivals like VeriFone and PayPal.

SPRINT Yes, the phone company. This might seem the most out-there idea. But it solves many of Apple’s biggest problems.

Such a deal would give Apple its own wireless network, which it could upgrade to become the ultimate high-speed wireless carrier in the country. It could eventually use the network to bypass the cable operators to deliver content directly to the home on multiple devices, including the product that everyone speculates is on its way: a TV device.

With a stock market value of $13.5 billion, Sprint can be purchased for a song. Apple could easily spend four times more than that — say, $50 billion — to build out the Sprint network and turn it into a showcase for the next generation mobile technology. Apple could still offer its devices on other carriers, but its premium product would exist on its own network.

Think about it: Apple service, Apple Stores and simple Apple pricing. That would revolutionize the business. And such an investment would force the other carriers to step up their game, which would only help Apple. Most compelling is the possibility of Apple owning the last mile into everyone’s home (wirelessly) and be able to offer televised content. (I had considered Netflix as a suitable acquisition target, but if Apple had its own telephone company, it could negotiate directly with content providers on a level playing field with cable and satellite operators.)

The total cost for this grocery list, takeover premiums and additional investments included, is about $97 billion, give or take a couple billion. (Let’s put aside the thorny issue of how Apple can use its cash, much of which is abroad, without being taxed). That would leave Mr. Cook with $20 billion in the bank for walking-around money.

DealBook Column: Suggestions for an Apple Shopping List

David Paul Morris/Bloomberg NewsTim Cook, left, chief of Apple, and Paul Sagan, chief of Akamai Technologies, at the Sun Valley conference.

Question: What would you do if you had $117 billion?

That’s the challenge facing Tim Cook, Apple’s chief, whose company’s cash hoard keeps growing — by about $1 billion a week.

He could hold onto it. He could increase Apple’s dividend, which he instituted this year for the first time.

Or he could spend it.

Just last week, Mr. Cook acquired AuthenTec, a mobile security company, for $356 million in cash — a price equal to pocket lint for a company with the war chest the size of Apple’s.

The real question is whether Mr. Cook would ever spend Apple’s money on an “elephant” — Wall Street parlance for a huge deal.

Apple denizens often say that the company is not interested in deal making. It has, after all, invented some of today’s most successful consumer products. But that view misunderstands Apple’s history: some of its most important innovations were not invented within Apple; they were purchased from other companies.

For example, the touch-sensitive gesture technology that made the iPhone and iPad possible was invented and patented by FingerWorks, which Apple acquired in 2005. Siri? Apple bought it in 2010. Even Apple’s current Macintosh operating system was an acquisition of sorts. It is built on the back of NeXT, acquired from Steve Jobs (they got him to return as part of the deal, too) in 1996. (Pixar, Mr. Jobs’s other big success, was an acquisition as well. He bought the company from George Lucas as part of a spinoff from Lucasfilm in 1986.)

A year before Mr. Jobs died, he strongly hinted that Apple would consider a big deal. “We strongly believe that one or more very strategic opportunities may come along, that we are in a unique position to take advantage of because of our strong cash position,” Mr. Jobs said in a call with analysts in 2010.

Having all that money can be daunting, so to help Mr. Cook, here is a potential shopping list — some must-buys and some pie-in-the-sky targets — that he may want to consider:

NUANCE This is the one no-brainer on the list. Nuance, based in Burlington, Mass., provides much of the speech recognition technology behind Apple’s Siri and dictation functions. Right now, Apple has merely licensed it and integrated it into both its mobile devices like iPhones and iPads as well as its new Macintosh operating system. Most users think it is Apple technology, but those services wouldn’t work without Nuance.

It should go without saying, but the importance of speech recognition is only going to increase in the future. Nuance has more patents for it and has developed the technology further than just about any firm in the world. At some point, Nuance will be able to hold Apple for ransom. Google and Microsoft are steadily building their own speech recognition technologies and they are catching up quickly. Nuance’s market value is $6.3 billion. Even if Apple paid twice as much, it would be a worthwhile investment.

TWITTER AND PATH Consider this a one-two punch. Apple should buy the social media companies Twitter and Path. Twitter is well known. The 140-character Twitterverse now has more than 140 million active monthly users. It is one of the few, if only, independent social media properties that could allow Apple to build its own social media platform to truly compete against the likes of Facebook and Google.

Twitter’s price tag is just north of $10 billion, and as my colleagues Evelyn M. Rusli and Nick Bilton reported in The New York Times last week, the idea has certainly crossed the minds of Apple executives.

Path is less familiar, but it would be an integral ingredient for Apple’s push into social media. Path is a fast-growing social media company that works on mobile devices only. It has cracked the code on making the mobile experience of sharing with friends enjoyable. Path would probably cost $250 million to $1 billion. If Apple were to stir together Twitter, Path and its own Photo Stream service — and leveraged all the data it has collected about its users over the years (while mindful of privacy issues) — the company would have quite a product that would keep consumers hooked.

RESEARCH IN MOTION Yes, this one may be a head-scratcher, considering that the iPhone seems to have eaten RIM’s BlackBerry for breakfast — and lunch. But with a marke value of $3.7 billion it is a relative bargain and could be had for four weeks’ worth of Apple’s spare cash).

Such a deal would instantly put Apple into the enterprise market, giving it access to corporate and government customers that require RIM’s highly secure servers. Apple could build access into RIM’s network directly into future iPhones and maybe even create an iPhone with BlackBerry’s famous keyboard, which for many of us would create the ultimate smartphone.

RIM’s relationships with corporate and government customers could be leveraged to sell other products like computers and iPads. RIM also owns QNX, a software that is being used in its next-generation BlackBerry devices. More important for Apple, QNX is used as an in-dashboard operating system, and it is already in 20 million cars, like Chryslers and Porsches.

Finally, there are RIM’s patents, said to be worth $1 billion to $4 billion alone, a virtual treasure trove for a company that is locked in brutal patent wars with rivals. Google paid $12.5 billion for Motorola Mobility last year, in part, to secure the company’s patent portfolio.

SQUARE Everyone is talking about the mobile wallet. Square, started by the Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, has created a unique new electronic payment system though iPhones and iPads. The next time you go to a coffee shop, there is a chance you can pay with your iPhone simply by saying your name when you get to the cash register.

Square’s value has crept up to more than $3 billion, which is high for a company that is still losing money. But if Apple could integrate Square into iTunes — which has over 400 million active credit cards on file from around the world — it could become a sensation overnight, pushing out rivals like VeriFone and PayPal.

SPRINT Yes, the phone company. This might seem the most out-there idea. But it solves many of Apple’s biggest problems.

Such a deal would give Apple its own wireless network, which it could upgrade to become the ultimate high-speed wireless carrier in the country. It could eventually use the network to bypass the cable operators to deliver content directly to the home on multiple devices, including the product that everyone speculates is on its way: a TV device.

With a stock market value of $13.5 billion, Sprint can be purchased for a song. Apple could easily spend four times more than that — say, $50 billion — to build out the Sprint network and turn it into a showcase for the next generation mobile technology. Apple could still offer its devices on other carriers, but its premium product would exist on its own network.

Think about it: Apple service, Apple Stores and simple Apple pricing. That would revolutionize the business. And such an investment would force the other carriers to step up their game, which would only help Apple. Most compelling is the possibility of Apple owning the last mile into everyone’s home (wirelessly) and be able to offer televised content. (I had considered Netflix as a suitable acquisition target, but if Apple had its own telephone company, it could negotiate directly with content providers on a level playing field with cable and satellite operators.)

The total cost for this grocery list, takeover premiums and additional investments included, is about $97 billion, give or take a couple billion. (Let’s put aside the thorny issue of how Apple can use its cash, much of which is abroad, without being taxed). That would leave Mr. Cook with $20 billion in the bank for walking-around money.

Tool Kit: An Updated Guide to Laptop Shopping

The results of that search, most likely, will tell you to keep track of these things: the processor’s speed, the amount of memory, the brand and the model of graphics card.

But for most of us, worrying about such features is a waste of time (with one exception).

First off, I want to reiterate — for most of us. If you need a laptop that will let you render 3-D graphics while also managing La Guardia’s air traffic control system, stop reading and come back next week. You can continue to buy laptops the old-fashioned way.

For those of you who are still reading, there are a few features that you should worry about that are unlikely to have come up in your search. You want a portable computer to get you online, and to allow you to watch some movies, answer some e-mails and work on a document, spreadsheet or PowerPoint presentation.

So here’s a guide to help you figure out what’s worth paying attention to, and what you can skip.

WEIGHT Anything more than six pounds is a pain in the shoulder. Any number of laptops weigh far less than that (down to around two and a half pounds), so there’s no reason to get anything heavier.

SCREEN SIZE The smallest displays are about 10 inches, measured diagonally. This is too small. The next step up is around 11 and a half inches, which is great for a second laptop that you can take traveling. But for most of us, 13 inches is the sweet spot — big enough but still portable enough to be thrown in a bag.

Laptops with 15-inch displays are just a bit too big for that, to say nothing of IMAX-size 17- and 18-inch models, which are awkwardly huge and at eight pounds or more, violate our weight rule.

PROCESSOR Doesn’t matter. Seriously. Does the laptop you’re looking at have a 2nd Generation Intel Core i3-2377M Processor running at 1.4GHz with a 3MB L3 cache? That’s wonderful. Oh wait, it doesn’t? Still wonderful. For regular people, all processors are fine. Don’t get bogged down in the details — and don’t pay more for some optional chip that offers an incremental speed boost. For what you need a laptop to do, it’s fine as is.

BATTERY LIFE Take a look at this fine print about battery-life specs from Best Buy’s Web site: “Battery life will vary depending on the product configuration, product model, applications loaded on the product, power management setting of the product, and product features used by the customer.”

In other words, battery-life specs mean little. Have a power cord with you.

MEMORY Unlike the processor, RAM (random access memory) does matter. You want 4 gigabytes of RAM. A laptop with less than that will seem sluggish, with annoying delays between the time you click on a menu command or hit a key and something actually happens. If a manufacturer tries to sneak beneath a certain price with a model that comes with under 4GB, but you can upgrade for a couple of hundred bucks, you should upgrade.

Do you need more than 4GB? Let me ask you this: Are you a video editor? Do you like to leave more than a dozen applications open at once? If your answer is “no,” you don’t.

STORAGE This used to matter a lot, but with the rise of streaming services and cloud computing, the amount of storage on your computer has become a little less important. Music can be streamed from Spotify, Rhapsody and other services. Documents and other files can live on Google Docs. Photos can be uploaded to iCloud or SmugMug or Flickr. TV shows and movies can be streamed from Netflix, Amazon and Hulu.

Even if you want to keep files stored on your computer’s hard drive so that they can be available when you do not have an online connection, services like Dropbox and Microsoft’s SkyDrive can let you select the specific files you want to keep locally, while keeping copies in the cloud. When you make changes to files that live on your computer, they will sync up with their online twin, so you don’t have to worry about which version you were working on.

Tool Kit: An Updated Guide to Laptop Shopping

The results of that search, most likely, will tell you to keep track of these things: the processor’s speed, the amount of memory, the brand and the model of graphics card.

But for most of us, worrying about such features is a waste of time (with one exception).

First off, I want to reiterate — for most of us. If you need a laptop that will let you render 3-D graphics while also managing La Guardia’s air traffic control system, stop reading and come back next week. You can continue to buy laptops the old-fashioned way.

For those of you who are still reading, there are a few features that you should worry about that are unlikely to have come up in your search. You want a portable computer to get you online, and to allow you to watch some movies, answer some e-mails and work on a document, spreadsheet or PowerPoint presentation.

So here’s a guide to help you figure out what’s worth paying attention to, and what you can skip.

WEIGHT Anything more than six pounds is a pain in the shoulder. Any number of laptops weigh far less than that (down to around two and a half pounds), so there’s no reason to get anything heavier.

SCREEN SIZE The smallest displays are about 10 inches, measured diagonally. This is too small. The next step up is around 11 and a half inches, which is great for a second laptop that you can take traveling. But for most of us, 13 inches is the sweet spot — big enough but still portable enough to be thrown in a bag.

Laptops with 15-inch displays are just a bit too big for that, to say nothing of IMAX-size 17- and 18-inch models, which are awkwardly huge and at eight pounds or more, violate our weight rule.

PROCESSOR Doesn’t matter. Seriously. Does the laptop you’re looking at have a 2nd Generation Intel Core i3-2377M Processor running at 1.4GHz with a 3MB L3 cache? That’s wonderful. Oh wait, it doesn’t? Still wonderful. For regular people, all processors are fine. Don’t get bogged down in the details — and don’t pay more for some optional chip that offers an incremental speed boost. For what you need a laptop to do, it’s fine as is.

BATTERY LIFE Take a look at this fine print about battery-life specs from Best Buy’s Web site: “Battery life will vary depending on the product configuration, product model, applications loaded on the product, power management setting of the product, and product features used by the customer.”

In other words, battery-life specs mean little. Have a power cord with you.

MEMORY Unlike the processor, RAM (random access memory) does matter. You want 4 gigabytes of RAM. A laptop with less than that will seem sluggish, with annoying delays between the time you click on a menu command or hit a key and something actually happens. If a manufacturer tries to sneak beneath a certain price with a model that comes with under 4GB, but you can upgrade for a couple of hundred bucks, you should upgrade.

Do you need more than 4GB? Let me ask you this: Are you a video editor? Do you like to leave more than a dozen applications open at once? If your answer is “no,” you don’t.

STORAGE This used to matter a lot, but with the rise of streaming services and cloud computing, the amount of storage on your computer has become a little less important. Music can be streamed from Spotify, Rhapsody and other services. Documents and other files can live on Google Docs. Photos can be uploaded to iCloud or SmugMug or Flickr. TV shows and movies can be streamed from Netflix, Amazon and Hulu.

Even if you want to keep files stored on your computer’s hard drive so that they can be available when you do not have an online connection, services like Dropbox and Microsoft’s SkyDrive can let you select the specific files you want to keep locally, while keeping copies in the cloud. When you make changes to files that live on your computer, they will sync up with their online twin, so you don’t have to worry about which version you were working on.