Adobe Summit:

Jason attended the Adobe summit.

• Adobe announced a Cross Device Attribution “Device Co-op” 
• From the retail supersession, Sucherita Mulpuru shared the Forrester mobile forecast,$35B in mobile sales, $977B mobile influenced sales.  So for every dollar purchased on a mobile device, another $28 are influenced.
• Adobe demoed an entirely unrealistic retail use case "REI Shopping Bag" based on technology from Twyst.
• Razorfish debuted a new set of tools for creating B2B commerce experiences using the Adobe stack, called Razorshop B2B 
  
  

Bronto Summit

Scot attended the Bronto conference, and gave a talk on "E-Commerce and the On-Demand Economy"

Other News

• Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. announced Monday that it sold 3 trillion yuan ($463 billion) of goods through its online shopping websites in the past year ending in March, a milestone for the company.  When their fiscal year ends on March 31, they likely will surpass Walmart as the largest retailer in the world 
  Macys thinks amazon can’t compete
• Microsoft Chatbot “Tay” - taken down after abuse
• Apple Pay is coming to the mobile web

Online Grocery - there is some conflicting opinions about the future of online grocery.

• HSBC Analysts were bearish - "We remain unconvinced of long-term viability of home deliveries for grocery” David McCarthy 
• While a Morgan Stanley study predicts online grocery is growing fast.

Episode 19 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Thursday, March 24th, 2016.

http://retailgeek.com/podcast

Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, SVP Commerce & Content at Razorfish, and Scot Wingo, Founder and Executive Chairman of Channel Advisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.

EP018 - Target "Goldfish", Instacart, and Amazon Peeves

Amazon News:

• This week is the 10th anniversary of AWS.  Stratechery has a great piece about how Amazon leverages AWS with it's novel strategy for scale 
• Journalists touring Amazon Fulfillment centers, noticed that Amazon uses video shaming to discourage theft.  You can take your own tour of an Amazon FC by signing up here. 
• Dropbox announced that they are (mostly) moving off of AWS and developing their own storage.
• Walmart has released OneOps, their platform for deploying cloud based infrastructure apps, such as Walmarts own e-commerce platform.  Apps can be agnostically deployed across Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS, Rackspace, and OpenStack.
• Amazon has VR guru Avi Bar-Zeev, and filed for a patent on room based headset-less VR.  Amazon also filed for a patent around using selfies for payment.
• Amazon private label suits have been favorably reviewed by business insider.: 

Jason & Scot discuss our Amazon peeves:

• Prime now not well integrated website
• Amazon Echo App Store (Skills) is just a 37 page list of apps.
• Delivery drivers, pantry GUI, and customer service edge cases could all use improvement.

Non-Amazon news:

• Ultra announced surprisingly strong earnings, and plans to open 100 new stores, and dramatically expand brand boutiques.
• US Dept of Commerce released it's February retail sales data.
• Brands are now paying instacart for deliveries.

Target project "goldfish"

Target is running ads for engineers for a mysterious new project, codenamed "Goldfish".  The job listings specify "You must have a deep understanding of the fundamentals of retail marketplaces, social commerce and influencer networks," which caused Jason & Scot to speculate about what the project might be.

Scot is in Florida this week for the Bronto conference, giving a talk on "E-Commerce and the On-Demand Economy"

Episode 18 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Tuesday, March 15th, 2016.

http://retailgeek.com/podcast

Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, SVP Commerce & Content at Razorfish, and Scot Wingo, Founder and Executive Chairman of Channel Advisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.

EP017 - JCP, Gap, CostCo, URBN News, February Same Store Sales, Search & Category Page Usability, and Upcoming Events

JCP does not plan to close stores

Marvin Ellison, JCP CEO:

“What’s more, Penney has noticed that when it closes a store, online sales in the surrounding area also fall because awareness of the J.C. Penney brand falters”

“Ellison last month told investors that shoppers coming in to pick up an online order typically end up spending another 35% on that trip”

Was Ron Johnson right?  Scot thinks he didn't have enough time, but that his experiential strategy was right on.  Jason thinks trying to transition from promotional pricing to everyday low prices too quickly was a big mistake.

Dicks Sporting Goods Earnings

Dicks is finally transitioning from their outsourced e-commerce site to their own site.  They previously outsourced it to GSI (now E-Bay Enterprises) with a very long contract.  Jason mentioned that most GSI clients are finally bringing their web experiences in house.  

There is a funny easter egg in the last GSI sites.  They all have a few "Test SKUs" which are actually for sale on the site, such as the “Norm M TEST PID - DO NOT TOUCH EVER!!!” T-Shirt.  You can do a google search, and see all the sites that have this particular test product.

Costco Earnings

What's keeping Costco CFO Richard Galanti up at night:

"Everybody in the world never wanting to leave their house and only typing stuff to order and get it at the front door”

He went on to say:

"We want to do everything possible to get them in the store and not just come and pick something up," Galanti told analysts, explaining why he didn't expect to roll out in-store pickup anytime soon. About e-commerce is general, he said, "some out there would argue it's about time. But we're getting to it."

Jason and Scot agree that Costco is way behind on omni-channel e-commerce and it's likely to catch up with them.

Urban Outfitters Earnings

Gap Earnings 

Gap same store sales were down 4%, but E-Commerce was only up 1%!?!?! (vs an industry average 15%).  Gap CEO Art Peck ran e-commerce until February of 2015, but now they seem to really be struggling.

February ChannelAdvisor Same Store Sales

Amazon “Style Code Live” is a new daily 30 minute fashion/style show distributed via the web featuring shoppable products.  Is this a threat to QVC/HSN? 

Scot and Jason have a discussion about usability on e-commerce search result pages and category pages.  How many results should you show per page for search and category pages?

Upcoming Events:

Bronto Summit, Miami 3/16 - Scot will be speaking
Adobe Summit, Las Vegas 3/21-3/24 - Jason will be attending
ConversionXL Live, Austin 3/30-4/1 - Jason will be attending
Demandware XChange,Hollywood FL, April 4 - Jason will be attending
Channel Advisor Catalyst Las Vegas, April 11 - Jason will be speaking
ShopTalk, Las Vegas, May 16 - Scot and Jason will both be speaking
IRCE Chicago, June 6 - Scot will be speaking

Episode 17 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Wednesday, March 9th, 2016.

http://retailgeek.com/podcast

Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, SVP Commerce & Content at Razorfish, and Scot Wingo, Founder and Executive Chairman of Channel Advisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.

EP016 - Mobile World Congress, Target Earnings, Sports Authority Chapter 11, and Book Recommendations

Mobile World Congress recap:
Mobile Connect - http://www.gsma.com/personaldata/personal-data-programme
Echoss - http://www.12cm.co.kr/en/12cm
Viewport fragmentation

Q4 results continue to come in:
Target
Comp sales up 1.9 vs Walmart 0.6%
Signature Categories up 6%
Traffic up 5 consecutive quarters
Q4 E-Com Up 34% vs Walmart 8%
30% of orders fulfilled from stores (40% OOS in FC)
E-commerce up 31% for Full Year (vs 30% last year)
Free Shipping vs. Walmart $50 threshold
Further reading:
http://fortune.com/2016/02/24/target-walmart-holiday-shopping
http://fortune.com/2016/03/02/target-ecommerce-2
http://www.wsj.com/articles/target-says-online-sales-surge-tied-to-store-inventories-1456348233

MercadoLibre:
Gross Merchandise Volume rose 86% in local currencies, mainly driven by Argentina and Brazil. Marketplace revenues grew 63% and non-Marketplace 79%. Total revenues accelerated to 69%, all in local currencies.
Total payment transactions grew 79% to 25.4 million, while Total payment volume grew close to 100% in local currencies, reaching $1.5 billion. MecardoEnvios (MercardoLibre's payment platform) penetration close to 70% in Brazil, and 50% considering only the countries where the shipping solution is available. 2016 forecast - 23% GMV growth, caused by headwinds in BR - transition to next blurb.

Sports Authority Files chapter 11
Closing 140 stores (1/3 of total)
Expect / trying to come out the other side in better shape
$1b in liabilities $50k in assets http://money.cnn.com/2016/03/02/news/companies/sports-authority-bankruptcy/index.html

Amazon

• Brita filter with self-replenish via Dash
• Amazon Prime Now reaches 48% of the US population

This week we want to introduce a new segment called Jason and Scot recommends:

Originals is by Adam Grant with a foreword by Sheryl Sandberg

The Amazon Marketplace Seller That Says It Has "the Colombian Cocaine" of Algorithms
By Burt Helm on Slate
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2016/02/26/pharmapacks_makes_over_70_million_selling_miscellaneous_items_on_amazon.html

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future
by Ashlee Vance

Extraordinary Experiences: What Great Retail and Restaurant Brands Do
by Denise Lee Yohn

http://retailgeek.com/podcast

Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, SVP Commerce & Content at Razorfish, and Scot Wingo, Founder and Executive Chairman of Channel Advisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.