Retail

The Wall Street Journal broke a story that Amazon is in talks to acquire a handful of JC Penney leases, which would continue Amazon’s brick and mortar experiment. Andrew and Gene discuss why this seemingly odd strategy might make sense…

In the wake of COVID-19, consumers around the globe have been forced to change their buying habits. For many, ecommerce has become the preferred—or only—way to buy goods, a change that will likely accelerate the adoption of ecommerce by 2-3…

The end of the war is a long way off, but Amazon has just won another battle for the future of retail. The company recently announced the opening of Go Grocery, a first-of-its-kind large format automated retail store in downtown…

Ember Mug | $99 | Keep your coffee warm – solve a 500-year-old problem. Byta Bottle | $31 | Our favorite water bottle; and a small way to combat the problem with recycling. Nike Epic React Flyknit 2 | $99 | Loup…

Walmart recently announced InHome Delivery to bring groceries directly to customers’ fridges, the latest example of Walmart closely following the Amazon playbook. Amazon announced in-home delivery with its Key service in 2017. While the fast follower approach may seem prudent,…

Retailers are racing to provide faster, cheaper, and more personalized service. In early June, Amazon announced Prime Free One Day shipping, a move that will again raise the bar for consumer expectations on delivery. Four days later, Walmart announced InHome…

Amazon reported strong Q1 results with revenue in-line with consensus of $59.7B and EPS of $7.09, well ahead of consensus at $4.72. Don’t let the Q1 earnings beat mislead you — Amazon is investing in long-term growth. Exhibit A: Amazon’s…

We think about the future of retail in three buckets: online retail, automated retail, and empathic retail. Telehealth, the process of visiting a doctor virtually to get medical treatment, including prescription medicine, combines all three. It also includes a fourth…

Angela Ahrendts, head of Apple Retail, is leaving the company in April after a five-year tenure. While we view Apple’s physical retail experience as the best in tech, there’s room for improvement. The Genius Bar is a victim of its…

A few days ago, we saw interesting research from RBC Analysts forecasting Amazon’s Go stores to be a $4.5 billion business by 2021. RBC’s work aligns with our $50B estimate for the total automated retail space, implying a 9% share…

We recently tested four smart speakers by asking Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant, and Cortana 800 questions each. Google Assistant was able to answer 88% of them correctly vs. Siri at 75%, Alexa at 73%, and Cortana at 63%. Last year,…

We were wrong in predicting Amazon would acquire Target in 2018. It was the boldest of our 8 predictions for the year, and it was incorrect. However, we continue to believe the combination makes sense because Amazon needs to acquire a Target-like footprint…