Tag Archives: retail

best business stories of 2018 (Longreads)

A couple stories caught my eye. Once is about the collapse of Toys ‘R Us, and the other about what it would actually take to bring manufacturing back to the U.S., if we decided we want to do that.

I don’t see why pop-up urban toy stores, similar to the pop-up Halloween stores that set up shop temporarily in underused retail spaces, couldn’t work. You could have a curated collection of the coolest toys of the year set up in a very entertaining way, let kids actually play with them, and have roving salespeople and interactive displays where people can order the toys to be delivered to their homes, say with free 2-day shipping. You could use whatever existing low-cost retailer you want (Amazon, Walmart, whatever) while recreating some of the holiday magic of F.A.O. Schwartz and small town Main Streets of yesteryear.

bricks and mortar Amazon

We all know that traditional retail is dying because Amazon can deliver anything to your front door. Now, in a strange irony, Amazon is opening some physical stores.

Last year, Amazon opened its first physical bookstore in the University Village shopping mall in Seattle. The store features thousands of books, a tiny sampling of those on Amazon’s website, most of them with customer ratings of four stars and above.

The books sell for the same price in the store as they do on Amazon’s site. Because book prices regularly change on the site, visitors to the store scan books using a mobile app to find out how much they cost.

Although the store is called Amazon Books, it prominently features a growing array of Amazon-made devices, including the Kindle tablet, the Fire TV set-top device and Echo, its home speaker and virtual assistant.

new grocery delivery services

This article is about some new subscription-based grocery delivery services. This could make it even easier to live in car-free walkable communities for those who want to do that. You can shop for fresh food at a market when you want to do that, but have a steady stream of basic staples delivered on a reliable basis. Combine this with smart appliances – meaning your refrigerator and cabinets know what is in them – and you should never have to run out for an item in the middle of the night again. The only possible concern I have is whether this will push us even more towards processed, packaged food.