Shoptalk

According to Yankelovich Monitor & Greenfield Online, women account for 85 percent of all consumer purchases, yet women have traditionally been underrepresented at the most senior levels of retail organizations--as well as on stage at high-level industry events. Jeff Gennette, CEO of Macy's gets this. He says, "With a customer base that is largely female, it is imperative to our business that our executive ranks reflect the communities we serve. Diversity and inclusion are core to our success, and I am so proud to have this incredible …

Shoptalk’s Speaker Lineup Continues to Break New GroundRead More

With the next Shoptalk fast approaching, I sat down with Anil Aggarwal and Zia Daniell Wigder from the Shoptalk team for the first of a series of weekly interviews I'll be publishing leading up to the March 3-6, 2019 event. We discussed Shoptalk and the role it plays in helping create the future of retail, and I had a Zen-like realization: Shoptalk isn't an "events company," it's a tech company. If you've attended Shoptalk, you'd be forgiven for thinking it's just the ultimate version of the typical kinds of events we're all used to …

Shoptalk is Emerging as an Important Retail Tech Company: Here’s WhyRead More

By Robin Lewis The industry continues in its shakeout and shake-up phase, as technology has empowered a nextgen consumer culture which is forcing radical transformation across all consumer-facing industries. The shakeout has already shuttered thousands of stores, with more to come. Also, other than so-called ‘A’ malls, many of the roughly 900 lesser performing malls have closed, and the rest are under the threat of closure. Hundreds of retailers and brands, many with iconic names, have been forced into bankruptcy. Those remaining stores, …

The Shakeup Moment of OpportunityRead More

By Robin Lewis There’s that word “store” again. And it’s been used for centuries to describe physical buildings that store and sell groceries, including packaged goods. The store, as burned into our minds over all those years, was static. Consumers had to go to the store to find and buy groceries. Today, there is nothing static about the flow of goods and services from creation to consumption, in any consumer-facing industry. Creation can take place anywhere in the world. Distribution can flow directly to consumers, or through several …

Grocery Store or Platform?Read More

By Robin Lewis Bring it to me, just for me, new, now and more often. That just about says everything the consumer expects, indeed, demands today. Oh, yes, and it’s got to be wrapped in an experience. But the most important command is spoken with the five words, “bring it to me now.” And it is this demand for NOW (and also delivered for free), that is perhaps the most complex and costly last function in the value chain. It all started with Amazon’s incredible logistics and distribution capability to execute such speed, which in turn forced …

The Last MileRead More

By Robin Lewis It can be said that the US consumer marketplace has gone through three major disruptions over the past century. Beginning circa 1900, it was the Industrial Revolution. Then around 1950, a Marketing Revolution began. And in the early 2000s, the Technology Revolution was born, and is still exploding. Each one of these disruptive periods was (and still is in the case of the Technology Revolution) driven by awesome new commercial tools. And each provided consumers with more, new, better, cheaper and faster goods and services and …

Epic Marketplace DisruptionsRead More