Identifying the critical trends that are shaping retail (short- and long-term) is an art supported by science. And that’s what Shoptalk does every year to build insightful content to guide retail executives in navigating an unpredictable, dynamic digital marketplace. All retail, whether legacy physical brands or the digital natives, face the same macro issues that keep everyone awake at night. The operations that once separated legacy from digital brands have merged, and it takes some brave, bold, and innovative thinking to chart the course …
Behind the Scenes with Krystina Gustafson
How do you curate great content for 10,000 digital innovation leaders who have high expectations for learning something new that will help them navigate the fast-changing retail environment? We caught up with Krystina Gustafson, Shoptalk’s senior vice president of content and chair of its advisory board, to hear about her approach for creating industry-leading content. With a solid background in business journalism (CNBC), Gustafson understands and appreciates how critical it is to provide content that touches on the industry’s biggest …
Amazon’s Disruption Just Gets Worse
As if Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s migraine isn’t big enough with the challenge of redefining Amazon’s entire business Jassy to Employees: Redefine Amazon, he now has 14,000 of his employees (so far) who joined a Slack channel, called “Remote Advocacy,” intended to share a virulent pushback on Jassy’s surprise mandate that the majority of employees would be required to come into the office "at least three days per week" starting in May. According to Insider magazine, Jassy’s mandate said, "collaborating and inventing is easier and more effective …
Shoptalk Takes One-to-One Meetings to the Next Level
Shoptalk. Uber. How did these brands transform each of their industries? The answer, according to Shoptalk’s founder, Anil D. Aggarwal, is technology that facilitates the right connections at the right time and place. Aggarwal is also the founder and CEO of Personatech, the company behind the event tech platform used by Shoptalk for over five years to power its Hosted Retailers & Brands Program. Technology is the fundamental game changer for the entire events industry going forward, but you already know that if you’ve participated in the …
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Jassy to Employees: Redefine Amazon
I’m not going to do an “I told you so” (but I just did). Actually, I’m sharing a leaked recording that a very alert Insider Magazine scooped up, catching Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy delivering a brutally honest and provocative challenge for employees to redefine the company. What’s in a Name? According to Insider, Jassy urged employees to band together as the company tries to get through an unusually challenging time. He said there's a lot of work to do to make progress across Amazon's existing businesses, new businesses, teams, and the …
Walmart Checks Another Box that Amazon Can’t
Amazon has wasted the past several years and billions of dollars fiddling around with testing physical stores of all types and failing (a couple of Amazon Style stores are still breathing). It also over-predicted growth following the pandemic and retreated by shedding thousands of jobs and cancelling the planning and construction of unnecessary DCs. And Walmart marches on. But First, a Word About Visionaries Here's a lesson that keeps on giving: Visionary and genius entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos can “parachute in” from some imaginary …
Amazon and Barnes & Noble: A Giant Irony
The ironies that keep popping up at Amazon, post-Jeff Bezos’ departure as CEO, are truly astounding. And the one that stands out most is Amazon’s closing of all 66 Amazon Books in the U.S. and two in the United Kingdom. A Vision Lost? No one would argue that Bezos is a genius. Great entrepreneurs usually are (or they simply come up with a gee-whiz commonsense idea that nobody else had thought of). The only flaw in his greatness, as I have said before, is that he should have departed earlier before Amazon failed in its attempts at rolling …
Why Not Start Off Your Year with the Deal Junkie?
Anybody who is anybody in the mainstream retail industry knows Gilbert Harrison, the founder and CEO of Financo, and now Chairman of Harrison Group. Simply put, Financo was a firm that did deals, and the maestro of course, was the founder, the ultimate “deal junkie” himself. Thus, his autobiography, recently published by Post Hill Press is appropriately titled …you got it, Deal Junkie. Book Report For those of us who have known Gilbert over the past half century, we know that his smiling face on the cover is both an engaging friend and …