Serious and Sometimes Comic Musings on the Future of Retail
In this week’s Omni Talk Fast Five, Carl Boutet joins Chris, Anne, and Emma the Intern to talk the Amazon and Kohl’s grocery partnership, JCP’s buyout, Instacart and 7-Eleven, Ikea in downtown San Francisco, Walmart, drones, and shepherds.
Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga interview Jordan Fisher, CEO of Standard Cognition, about the future of checkout-free retail.
AI Computer vision-based checkout-free retail is all the rage right now, and Standard Cognition, with over $80 million in VC funding to date, is right at the center of that conversation, and especially in light of its recent announced plans with Circle K.
Chris and Anne discuss the origin of the company, where the technology is now and where it is going, and why deciding whether or not to retrofit physical store footprints is one of the key questions that will determine future retailer adoption.
They also put Jordan right on the hot seat (which Jordan handles with aplomb) when they ask him the question on every retail insider’s mind — “What was the deal with all those marketing claims of 3,000 Standard Cognition stores in Japan in time for 2020 Olympics?”
Jordan explains how that rumor came to be and why the next few months will be a put up or shut up moment for him and his company.
Grabango launches a live checkout-free store with Giant Eagle, Walmart+ gets a date, Amazon Fresh opens to the public, Mall of America goes livestreaming, and Macy’s has the temerity to think that the world needs smaller, off-mall versions of itself.
Grabango launches a live checkout-free store with Giant Eagle, Walmart+ gets a date, Amazon Fresh opens to the public, Mall of America goes livestreaming, and Macy’s has the temerity to think that the world needs smaller, off-mall versions of itself.
Nike cuts ties with wholesalers, Facebook launches shops, Zappos plans a store for NYC, Best Buy turns stores into distribution hubs, and Taco Bell makes a pickup-only drive thru lane.
Walmart’s Tennille Webb joins Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga to discuss how she worked with Mamava to make Walmart the first retailer to roll out lactation pods in over 100 U.S. stores.
In this week’s edition of the Omni Talk Fast Five, sponsored by FastSensor and Takeoff, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and Emma the Intern discuss what to make of all the earnings announcements this week (including Target, Walmart, Kohl’s, and more), Simon’s acquisition of Lucky Brand, Payless making a comeback, Standard Cognition and Circle K, and what Chris thinks is a weak excuse from Amazon on its liability surrounding defective products on its third-party marketplace.
With COVID-19 now ever present, knowing where and in what parts of a store social distancing is working or not working, by way of real-time data, is more important than ever.
Kalon Welch, FastSensor EVP Business Development, sits down with Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga of Omni Talk to discuss the ever-trending topic of workspace journey measurement through anonymous radio frequency tracking to make better decisions during these difficult times and how active distance alert monitoring (aka ADAM) could be one of the most important tools for retailers to deploy in their stores, in their warehouses, or even as they are unloading trucks to protect all involved.
As Kalon says, “That which gets measured, gets done,” and social distancing is pretty darn important to get done.
In the latest episode of the Omni Talk Fast Five, sponsored by FastSensor and Takeoff, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and Emma the Intern take on all the detractors pooh-poohing the rumors of Amazon placing warehouses in Simon mall properties, discuss Wayfair’s first-ever profit, and then geek out at the massive transformative grocery and convenience headlines surrounding Walmart and Instacart, Coty and GoPuff, and Kroger creating its own third-party marketplace.
In the latest edition of our Omni Talk Spotlight Series, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga interview Sara Batchelder, VP of Retail and QSR for Numerator. Chris, Anne, and Sara discuss Numerator’s unique panel data across both online and offline shoppers and then delve into some of the insights Numerator is already seeing around things like Click-&-Collect, the online acceleration in grocery, and the early promotional spending trends across various Back-to-School categories.
For example, did you know apparel promotional spend is down 60% vs. the year prior? We sure as heck didn’t.
In this week’s Omni Talk Fast Five, sponsored by FastSensor and Takeoff, Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga discuss all the week’s top retail news, including DoorDash’s new DashMart online store, CVS inking a deal with PayPal and Venmo, the rumors that Aldi is getting into the checkout-free technology game, 7-Eleven buying Speedway, and Walmart’s new omnichannel advertising platform that Chris and Anne just can’t agree on.
In this week’s Omni Talk Fast Five, sponsored by Takeoff, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and Emma the Intern discuss Amazon meeting with startups to then reportedly launch competing products, Sycamore Partners’ plan to merge Belk and JC Penney, Neiman Marcus calling it quits at Hudson Yards, all of retail closing down stores for Thanksgiving, and Rite Aid having no good reason on earth for deploying facial recognition technology for the last eight years.
To learn more about Takeoff, visit: https://www.takeoff.com/
In this week’s Omni Talk Fast Five, sponsored by Takeoff, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and Emma the Intern discuss the explosive growth in Panera’s coffee subscription program, Walmart joining forces with Yahoo (yes, you read that right), LL Bean’s decision to broaden its distribution, Domino’s new ‘fortressing’ strategy, and Amazon and Google both getting full up into livestream commerce this week.
To learn more about Takeoff, visit: https://www.takeoff.com/
In this week’s Omni Talk Fast Five, sponsored by Takeoff, Chris Walton, Anne Mezzenga, and Emma Irwin the Intern are joined by guest host Ken Pilot to break down all the week’s top headlines in retail. This week they talk Amazon’s new Dash Smart Shopping Cart, Klarna’s Gen-Z shopping event, Apple asking store employees to help customers from home, and Walmart and Amazon now duking it out in the healthcare space.
To learn more about Takeoff, visit: https://www.takeoff.com/
Omni Talk’s Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga turn their podcast spotlight once again on Syte, the intriguing visual AI startup out of Israel. After having Syte founder, Lihi Pinto Fryman, on the show in 2018, this time Chris and Anne sit down with Syte VP of Marketing Gal Fontyn to discuss how the company has evolved, the successes it has had, and how the concept of visual search is now moving into the arena of creating even deeper visual experiences within retail, the likes of which could make visual AI the single most important technology to understand within retail today.
Omni Talk is the retail blog for retailers, written by retailers. Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga founded Omni Talk in 2017 and have quickly turned it into one of the fastest growing blogs in retail. Know More →
