“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
Category: retail therapy
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 more
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 share this with the world for all of us to see (and learn from, or in the spirit of the late Sam Walton – shamelessly copy). | learn more
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 check it out yet? Let me know your thoughts! | learn more
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 limiting this for a while. | learn more
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 to antitrust issues for them. | learn more
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 about a year old but still very relevant. | learn more
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 for the benefit of innovators. | learn more
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
Club Monaco is stealing tricks from scrappy startups.
To round out the retail trifecta this week, here’s the Fast Company story of how Club Monaco continues to rewrite the rules of being a legacy retailer. | learn more
Best Buy should be dead, but it’s thriving.
Similar to the above story about discount softlines retailers, Bloomberg explains why Best Buy hasn’t been killed off by Amazon. | learn more
Ross and TJMaxx are still thriving.
CNN breaks down the key to their resilience in the face of internet retail competition. | learn more
Hackers account for 90% of login attempts at online retailers.
I’m not sure this mirrors my personal ecommerce experience, but since we don’t store credit card info maybe we’re not as good of a target. | learn more
The Amazon rocket just keeps flying higher.
“Amazon reported sales of $52.9 billion for the second quarter, up 39 percent from the year-ago period when it saw $38 billion. For the April quarter, retail rival Walmart grew sales by $5 billion year over year and brick-and-mortar retailer Target increased sales by just $764 million.” | learn more
Guy Turner’s idea for eCommerce returns.
It seems that every internet retailer that touches their own inventory has a problem: returns. Everybody hates dealing with them, but they’re a necessary component of the retail business. Guy Turner, partner at Hyde Park Venture Partners, offers an idea for a new business that might help, and he calls it eTurns. |learn more
Whole Foods’ suppliers shifting from shelves to screens.
“An outcome of Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods: Food businesses are redesigning their packaging and product formulas to better sell on the web.” | learn more
Wayfair founders on How I Built This.
Niraj Shah and Steve Conine are the founders of Wayfair.com, an internet retailer with over $4B in sales that was once an assortment of 250 disparate niche websites. They tell their interesting founding story in this interview. | learn more
8 retailers ready to grow in the US.
CNBC highlights small brands that seem to have a long runway ahead of them. A refreshing change of pace from the “retail apocalypse” news. | learn more
Tour of Amazon warehouse that ships supersized purchases.
Amazon has a special 1.2 million-square-foot facility in Fall River, MA that handles big bulky items. | learn more