"It's Twenty-Bleeping-Eighteen"

Show notes

Family Date Night at the Olive Garden Special Episode.

Homepod: more like yawn-pod. Plus: retail investment is gaining steam, mobile advertising to overtake traditional advertising, and bye bye sales! Finally, Nike makes the foam sole more personal.

Homepod: nobody cares

• Actually, people do care: they care to talk about how irrelevant it is.

• Business insider even gives you 7 reasons not to buy it.

• It's just a giant ipod and it only works with itunes.

• Hey, Apple, it's 20 bleepin' 18 already.

• At least it's more competition for sonos?

• In episode 1, we talked about Apple's exciting developments. Unfortunately, they haven't followed through of them.

• The lesson: Apple gonna Apple.

Amazon Go:

• Amazon Go is live!

• 2 weeks from today: we're going to the store and doing a review. Get ready.

• Bob Schwartz, friend of the pod, stood in line on day 2 of the launch said it worked seamlessly. But caveat: he didn't like the sandwich he bought.

We're we get all these new listeners?

• Thanks, new listeners.

• Thanks, NRF.

• Thanks, Branden Moskwa, for all of the new listeners.

The actual "Big News":

• A lot of positive news in retail.

• News from NRF: it's not a retail apocalypse, it's just a transformation.

• The Wall Street Journal reports on a 65 million dollar retail investment in Manhattan. Because Manhattan needs more retail :)

• But it makes sense to develop your own retail space without being entangled with existing retail lease agreements.

• A lot of people are redeveloping retail space.

• Developers taking expensive real estate and turning it into retail space is a really positive sign.  

• Phillip's family bet: is the new development in the neighborhood going to be a Walgreens? Probably.

You know what's still relevant? Digital Advertising:

• Goldman Sachs predicting digital advertising will Account for over half of all advertising globally

• Facebook and Google probably gobble up 94% of it.

• Traditional advertising still on the decline.

• Amazon now has a paid self-service platform for advertising, so does Snapchat.

• Instagram integrated into Facebook's digital advertising model.

• They predict video will have a breakout year.

• Meg Whitman went from CEO of HP to a CEO of a startup of a Jeffrey Katzenberg backed venture called new TV.

• They're specializing in scripted content under 10 minutes long.

From Digital to Brick and Mortar:

• Dollar shave club is opening a pop-up store in London. It looks like a retail experience with an old timey barber shop setup.

• Ecommerce companies starting to invade larger retail experiences.

• Potential Future Commerce field trips galore?

• We're Interested to see how the traditional market responds to this.

• There seem to be at least 2 responses:

1: adapt to the new models, like Nordstrom.

2: stop catering to bargain and passive shoppers, like Michael Kors, Gap, and Ralph Lauren.

• A disruptor company like Dollar Shave Club is interested in looking at the dollar cost average spent, not the per person purchase.

Alexa reminds us that time for this episode is almost over. Nike's new foam:

• Nike's using robots to make their shoes.

• And specifically, the new React foam running shoe.

• Instead of taking a sample size of a shoe design, they're creating a perfectly designed shoe.

• It's an algorithmically designed shoe so that it has the exact same performance for every particular shoe made.

• This is getting us much closer to what we've been predicting for personalized products.

• It's Brian's hammer!

• Nike is boasting a 13% energy return because of the foam sole.

Verdict: Future Commerce makes us want to spend way too much money.