News reports today indicate that Brandless, the SoftBank Vision Fund backed start-up, will shut down permanently. This news follows a tumultuous few years for the once promising start-up that offered high quality, “brandless” goods for a single fixed price point of $3. Brandless was an…
Greg Foran, the former CEO of Walmart U.S. said that “Retail Will Change More in the Next Five Years Than It Has in the Past 50 Years”. If he is even remotely correct, expect to see a rapidly shifting retail landscape as we enter a…
As the Holiday season of 2019 winds to an end, I am going to use this time to look back and to look ahead. The 2010’s were a transformative decade for retail. While Retailmageddon didn’t exactly come to pass, we saw a significant slowdown in…
There were two significant stories in the past few weeks involving Amazon’s incursion into the world of food retail. The first was the announcement of changes to pricing for the Amazon Fresh delivery service and the second was the recognition of what has been an…
Walmart’s performance in the third quarter should serve as a powerful reminder to the retail community that the world’s largest retailer remains a formidable competitor even as Amazon continues its assault on the rest of the market. Comparable store sales were up 3.2% in the…
“Change (in China) is so dynamic” Walmart’s SVP of Cross Border Trade, Ben Hassing set the tone for the sixth annual Global E-Commerce Leaders Forum (GELF) NYC program. Hassing’s keynote presentation, “The Local of Global Ecommerce” shared his experience as the head of Ecommerce and…
The sixth annual GELF NYC conference is being held on Thursday, September 19th. The New York conference brings together a community of digital and international executives from global brands and retailers across the U.S. This follows GELF conferences in Los Angeles and Miami (GELF LATAM)…
On Tuesday, Kohl’s announced a partnership with Facebook to use the social media giant’s consumer information to select a merchandising assortment. The assortment – featuring new or unknown brands – is entitled “Curated by Kohl’s,” and is part of CEO Michelle Gass’s efforts to enhance…
CHICAGO, IL- Aug. 5th, 2019 In this report McMillanDoolittle details shifting consumer expectations across all retail categories – and the blind spots the leaders of both legacy retailers and digital natives must overcome as they adapt to an integrated retail landscape. In Different Leaders /…
As I’ve written several times before, there are multiple reasons why the grocery category is well under-penetrated relative to other e-commerce categories. Multi-temperature products, awkwardly sized and shaped products, product and SKU proliferation, delivery challenges, combined with razor-thin margins have kept e-commerce penetration today to…
