Chris Walton

The Store of The Future Is Like Pornography. You’ll Know It When You See It.

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The Store of the Future Should Never Be About Buzzwords Take, for example, this introduction to a piece I came across regarding the future of store design in one of my favorite daily retail roundups, Retail Dive: What does experiential retail even mean these days? For some it's sprinkles, others it's meditation pods. What really matters is localization, service and shareability. Say what? Come again? Retail buzzwords are useless. They are meaningless semantic throwaways that bring us neither closer to understanding what the long-term …

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Is Walmart Losing Touch with America?

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Nowhere was the confusion more confusing this year than in the case of Walmart. Every week Walmart appeared to be doing its damnedest to stay in the headlines. From one week to the next Walmart was buying Flipkart in India to holding VR galas in Beverly Hills. The 2018 Walmart press release schedule could have been drawn up by Tommy Smothers - it yo-yoed that much. Amid all the fanfare though, one has to wonder if Walmart has not fallen prey to one of the deadliest diseases that plague many a retailer right now - what I call Keeping Up with …

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Four Gender-Parity Wishes for the 2019 Trade Show Circuit

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The 2018 trade show circuit has all but come to a close. Gone are the Shoptalks, IRCEs, eTail Wests, Shop.orgs, and so many other acronyms. The industry saw high-highs (Shoptalk) and low-lows (NRF), with much in between. It is only fitting that we start to plan ahead because quite soon, NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay will ring in the New Year again at the Big Show in January with his penchant for unbridled optimism. So, before NRF kicks off, I have one major issue to get off my chest: There is still more to be done in terms of advancing …

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Brandless – A Fad Like Shake Weight® or the Next Big Thing?

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With just a single year under its belt, Brandless, which prices all its roughly 300 products at $3, is reportedly valued at nearly $500 million, which is more than what Walmart paid for Bonobos. Some pundits have even touted Brandless as the most significant “Retail Disruptor” of the past year. The whole thing is mind-blowing. Perplexing. Is Brandless a retailer? Is it a consumer product goods company? Is it something else? Or, is there a reason I feel like Macbeth, seeing not a dagger before me, but the Pets.com sock puppet circa 1999 …

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Five Tools to Survive the Retail Apocalypse

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Zombie apocalypses are not so good. But many would argue that retail is right in the middle of one – Patient Zero has been infected and a nasty zombie virus is about to spread at an exponential rate. This zombie virus has a name: Amazon. Amazon is about to leave years of legacy retail hubris undead and wandering aimlessly down an old dusty road in mind-numbing purgatory. So, we need to be ready. We need to prep our safety shelters quickly with the tools necessary for survival. Here’s hope: There are five essential tools every company …

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Retail’s Mid-Year Physical Exam

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2018 has lived up to its billing. The year promised zaniness amid the industry-wide “crack-up,” and it has not disappointed. The last six months have raised as many questions as answers. It is appropriate that we now pause and pull our heads above water to take a closer look at the industry’s mid-year report card. Required Annual Exam Now that I am in my forties, an annual physical exam has become a rite of passage. Everything that can be checked is checked, everything that can be drawn is drawn and everything that can be brought up to scare …

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Matthew Shay, President and CEO of NRF, Needs a Wake-Up Call

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NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay recently published an article on LinkedIn entitled, The 3 Worst Articles on the Retail Apocalypse – And Why They’re Wrong. While I run the risk of biblical-sized smiting from the gods of the retail establishment, I cannot hold my tongue on this one. Shay’s post could not be more tone-deaf. His article strikes the exact wrong tone at the exact time we need him most. Consider this your wake-up call, Matthew Shay and NRF. That sound you hear? It’s your iPhone ringing at the side of your bed telling you it is time …

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Retail’s Q4 Sales Results

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Do we have amnesia? A mere six months ago at Shop.org in Los Angeles, I remember sitting amidst heated debates, akin to the Miller Lite “Taste Great, Less Filling” ads from the 1980s. The sticking point was about whether the industry was in the middle of an apocalypse. Today, the state of the industry is Book of Revelation type stuff on one hand, and Matthew Shay’s persistently shiny NRF optimism on the other. How has everything reversed course so quickly? Why the memory loss? The only refrain I know that changes this fast is Wheels on the …

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