I was both surprised and saddened to learn about the death of Tony Hsieh this weekend. Forty-six years old is far too young. Though best known as a pioneer of e-commerce (he was previously CEO of Zappos) and for his brilliant/wacky management ideas, Tony was… Read More
The United States and the United Kingdom recently published some official statistics on the impacts that this pandemic has had on ecommerce. The above chart is from Benedict Evans and he has some more over here. It’s worth a click through. What is clear is… Read More
I don’t think Snapchat is on a lot of people’s radars these days. (Though it did recently become worth more than Twitter.) But every time I hear about what they’re building I can’t help but think, “Wow, that’s really cleaver and creative. I see a… Read More
This is an interesting article about Amazon’s delivery network, which is now the 4th largest in the United States. Here are the numbers (most of which are as of 2019): Since 2014, Amazon has spent $39 billion building out its delivery network. When you add… Read More
Sometimes I think that writing a blog has become a bit old fashioned. I should probably be making videos. But the reality is that I like writing. Getting up in the morning, reading, having a coffee, and writing my thoughts down is a ritual that… Read More
Benedict Evan’s most recent blog post, called “Amazon as experiment,” draws some interesting parallels between what Amazon is doing today (and experimenting with) and the beginning of mass retail, namely the invention of the department store. He also talks about some of the shortcomings of… Read More
This is an excellent talk by NYU professor Scott Galloway about Amazon, online grocery, and many other aspects of the retail landscape. The bits about Amazon’s scale and reach are fascinating. There is about 30 minutes of him speaking quickly and then another 15 minutes… Read More
This piece in the New Yorker about how e-commerce, and in particular JD.com, is transforming rural China is worth a read. In typical New Yorker fashion, it’s a good long-form read, but one that you can also listen to if that’s your thing. What’s immediately… Read More
Amazon released its shortlist of HQ2 cities this morning. Below are the 20 metropolitan areas. They were selected from 238 bids, so this shortlist represents 8.4% of the original pool. Atlanta, GA Austin, TX Boston, MA Chicago, IL Columbus, OH Dallas, TX Denver, CO Indianapolis,… Read More
A friend of mine was in Scottsdale last month for an ICSC conference where Garrick H. Brown (VP of Retail Research for the Americas at Cushman & Wakefield) delivered this retail presentation. My friend flipped it to me this week and below are a couple… Read More
