Hello Omni Talk Fans! I’m heading to Europe for three straight weeks of conferences — Shoptalk Europe in Barcelona, the DIY Summit in Amsterdam, and the Consumer Goods Forum in Vienna — and before I get on that plane, I need to leave you with what might be the most well-rounded mix of headlines in a Fast Five podcast ever.
This week I was joined behind the microphones once again by someone who is quickly becoming one of my favorite guest hosts, former Serta Simmons CEO Shelley Huff, and together we tackled five headlines that paint a clear picture of all the issues facing retailers right now, wrapped in a very timely bright red bow.
Here’s a taste of what Shelley and I sunk our teeth into:
- Google’s Universal Cart:Â Google has been trying to own the shopping operating system since at least . . . forever, and now they finally have the technology to pull it off. The big question: are retailers about to become suppliers to Google? I think there’s a real “there, there” here, especially for budget-constrained shoppers cherry-picking the best grocery prices across multiple stores in a single transaction.
- Walmart’s prepaid consolidation program:Â Shelley and I agreed on this one. It’s a page straight out of Amazon’s flywheel, and it’s a genuine win for small suppliers who don’t have the logistics sophistication of a P&G or Unilever.
- SPAR Austria expands its Simbe Tally robot trial:Â Europeans are famously disciplined operators. When they scale a technology, it’s working. This one matters likely more than people realize once you think about the smaller store footprints involved, too.
- Walmart drone delivery hits 1 million:Â 40% of those came in Q1 alone. The fastest delivery? Four minutes. I’ll say it again: FOUR MINUTES. I’m getting my Gatorade and Doritos via drone now. I’m not driving to Speedway.
- AWS makes Amazon’s Alexa for Shopping AI available to any retailer:Â Shelley put it perfectly. Renting technology is smart, but compromising your customer relationship is dangerous. If you’re building your shopping experience on Amazon’s tech, you better know exactly what you’re giving up.
There’s all that, plus Radar CEO Spencer Hewett also stopped by to collect on a bet I lost (and to share some genuinely jaw-dropping numbers about his RFID deployments), and Shelley, in my favorite memory from the pod, guesses what The Rock’s new cologne probably smells like.
Listen to This Week’s Fast Five Podcast
Be careful out there,
— Chris and the entire Omni Talk team
P.S. Why was the sedimentary rock collection so cheap?
Because it was on shale.
Omni Talk® is the retail blog for retailers, written by retailers. Chris Walton founded Omni Talk® in 2017 and have quickly turned it into one of the fastest growing blogs in retail.