The great American closing was straightforward. Stores, restaurants, and the bulk of the economy switched to sleep mode; waking up will be a different matter. The shape of this phase of post-Covid retail is now unfolding. Other countries are well into the reopening and offer us models to consider. Additionally, innovators, driven by opportunity and a problem-solving culture have been rushing potential solutions to market. And finally, for VR, an existing technology that has been awaiting wide-spread adoption, the moment may have …
We Like Big Tech Again
We are all living in a time warp as our collective confinement continues, but let’s reminisce back to Q1 2020. In January, California residents gained the right to wrestle back their user data from the tech platforms, retailers, and any other companies that had captured and exploited it. In February, Senator Josh Hawley posited that the FTC take over Google, and Senator Amy Klobuchar introduced an antitrust modernization bill as a cudgel against big tech. The country was speeding toward a new era where the big technology companies would be …
Preparing for Recovery
As the clouds of COVID-19 darken, they are eclipsing our ability to see a clear future. The initial shock of the economic, employment and retail collapse has been intellectually and somewhat emotionally absorbed, but rather than the impact dissipating, it has morphed into palpable anxiety that is seeping into our organizations. We want to have the answers for the future, but this is a time to get comfortable with the now, and our inability to predict outcomes for the foreseeable future. As we are functioning in a situation without historical …
Eco Policy Gets Mainstreamed
We like our decade benchmarks. In 1961, JFK had his end-of-the-decade moonshot. Now after a stretch of corporate shoulder shrugging and lip service, CEO after CEO is announcing bold sustainability initiatives with 2030 as the North Star. Al Gore, the sustainability siren, stayed true to his message at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January. Also, at Davos was Greta Thunberg a voice of the future consumer, demanding action on climate change to her global business audience. Perhaps Thunberg, with the weight of that future consumer behind …
NRF 2020: It’s a New Decade and We’ve Finally Put the Retail Apocalypse to Bed
In early January, the global retail tribe marched past the Hudson Yards' towers, the Vessel, The Shed and construction cranes to cloister themselves in the Javits Center for the 2020 iteration of the annual retail mecca, the NRF Big Show. It appears that 20/20 proved too tempting an analogy for many copywriters to resist. The session titles implied a crystal-clear vision of the future of retail as the new decade unfolds. In actuality, the show reviewed and previewed the state of retail, displayed a mind-numbing array of available retail-tech …
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Reflections of a Trade War Correspondent
In the words of New York Times Columnist Paul Krugman, "At this point I've lost count of how many times markets have rallied in the belief that Trump was winding down his trade war, only to face announcements that a much-anticipated deal wasn't happening or that tariffs were being slapped on a new set of products or countries." While this could be the genesis of a new drinking game, the current tariff tumult, which it appears has reached a truce, is hardly entertaining for procurement officers who are trying to strategize around the shifting …
Stop Planning for Gen Z: They Have Arrived and This Is Where to Find Them
It begins now. The elders of the generation labeled "Z" will enter the active consumer class in 2020. This generation, born between 1996 and 2010 is estimated by the NRF to have $44 billion in buying power either through influencing family purchases or shopping on their own, and that number will increase to $82 billion by 2026. They will be 40 percent of the population by 2020. They live on their phones. They feel Facebook is for an older audience. Instagram, gaming, Snapchat, Twitch, and TikTok are where they are engaged. Are you ready? We …
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Next up for Amazon…Fashion
On a busy Saturday, the radio was tuned to a cultural trivia game show called Ask Me Another. The segment I heard was called "Closing Time," a game that revolved around "bygone retail chains." At the end of the segment, the host said, "Next year's game will be called "What's a Store?" The current state of retail is now well-trodden subject material, but the punch-line-ification of the situation was new to me. Amazon Has Stretched the Definition of Omnichannel As we have watched the shifts in commerce progress from concerning to tectonic, …