Payless opened a fake luxury store called Palessi.
This clever viral ad campaign had people offering to pay hundreds of dollars for $20 shoes. |learn more
Category: retail therapy
Amazon’s secretly owned brands.
John Herrman shares some interesting research in the New York Times. “The infinite retailer appears to be ushering untold numbers of stealth brands into your life…” | learn more
Retail and private equity: an in-depth look at the risky relationship.
“To explore the impact a decade and a half of leveraged buyouts has had on the industry, Retail Dive compiled data on acquisitions and outcomes from multiple sources. Here’s what we found.” | learn more
Walmart moves past Apple as #3 U.S. e-tailer.
“eMarketer also noted that Walmart’s e-commerce growth is 39.4 percent just behind Wayfair’s 40.1 percent clip.” | learn more
Amazon to Craigslist arbitrage.
“One writer tells us about the floor lamps and table lamps that he buys for under $75 on Amazon but sells for much more on Craigslist.” | learn more
How did athleisure take over American fashion?
“Yoga pants, tennis shoes, and the 100-year history of how sports changed the way Americans dress.” | learn more
Visual search sits on the brink of a breakthrough.
“According to eMarketer’s 2018 Visual Search report, about 1 billion visual searches happen per month. That’s a tiny fraction of overall search, which renders hundreds of billions of queries per month, but it’s growing. On…
New site where best direct-to-consumer companies are listed for free.
Stephan Aarstol, the founder of Tower Paddle Boards (backed by Mark Cuban), created NoMiddleMan.com to try and remove the need for d2c brands to pay a big portion of revenue to Amazon and Google for the privilege…
Technologies and players shaping cashier-less retail.
CB Insights offers a thorough analysis of the market for human-free checkout. Amazon Go gets disproportionate press in this space. “Over 150 companies are working on automated, human-free, brick-and-mortar retail, using machine vision, IoT, RFID,…
Wayfair Spaces uses magic Leap AR for interior design.
“The idea is to use AR to place virtual furniture in your real home to figure out if it will fit before you buy it or move all your furniture around. Visualizing the combination of…
Bluemercury doubles down on its strategy.
“As beauty retail giants Sephora and Ulta follow converging paths, Bluemercury diverges with a neighborhood strategy that builds a moat around the best beauty customers.” | learn more
Amazon’s machines are moving from warehouse to office.
Attention merchants! A friendly reminder to not be asleep at the wheel. “In a major reorganization, the retail veterans who once decided what to sell on the site have lost out to the marketplace data scientists.” | learn…
Inside Away’s instagram strategy.
The travel company that makes colorful suitcases and has raised $81MM in venture capital as they have scaled is a master of social media. Digiday explores how they use Instagram to sell you luggage. | learn more
Walmart showcases the custom apps that employees use to get their jobs done.
I love two things about this post: 1) they have a LOT of custom apps and think of them discretely, which makes me believe there’s a product team focused on each one, and 2) they…
Alibaba’s Hema store in China will drop your jaw.
This series of 10 tweets (with pics and video clips) by Rishi Taparia showcases a new retail story that puts Amazon Go to shame – seriously. | learn more
Amazon Go cashierless store opens in Chicago.
I didn’t get a chance to visit this week in the Loop, but I’m excited to try. There was also media speculation that they’ll open as many as 3,000 more of these stores. Any readers…
Walmart (finally) adds Moosejaw to its website.
Almost a year and a half after they acquired the specialty e-tailer, they’ve launched a new section offering the premium products for sale directly on Walmart’s website. The nuances of brand + distribution channels were probably…
How Amazon steers shoppers to its own products.
Private label is nothing new in retail, though the scale at which Amazon is doing it might be surprising to some (roughly 100 brands already). The NYT argues that it might also open the door…
Trends driving packaging industry disruption.
“With new pressures from the rise of e-commerce, growth in IoT, and consumer demands for environmental sustainability, the CPG packaging industry is facing major challenges.” | learn more
The new e-commerce factory towns.
Axios highlights the growth of warehouse jobs in e-commerce across the country. | learn more
Shoppers buy/return clothes just for the Instagram pics.
A survey of 35-44 year olds in the UK found almost 10% of them admitted to doing this. Whoa. | learn more
The direct-to-consumer landscape.
Teddy Citrin of Greycroft published this interesting analysis of the d2c landscape by product category, ranking barriers to entry, purchase frequency, average order value and more. Make sure to click-thru to the google doc. It’s…
How Sears sold technology to middle America.
It’s nice to see a story about the retailer in its prime for a change. “Sears and Roebuck—a firm that has seen better days—helped sell the public on computers, video games, and online services.” | learn more
E-tailers using empty mall spaces to test products.
Not much of a surprise, but it bears repeating: there’s a lot of empty mall space already, and a lot more to come. Digiday discusses some of the plans already in motion to repurpose it…
How e-commerce is transforming rural China.
This article has greatly expanded my perspective on China! “Jiayang Fan on how JD.com is expanding its consumer base with drone delivery and local recruits who can exploit villages’ tight-knit social networks.” | learn more