I find it hard to believe that “Fast Buck” Eddie actually believes that people in the retail industry and Wall Street actually believe that he is going to rescue the business of Sears. Yes Eddie, that pesky word “believe” is […]
The ‘fat lady’ is getting ready to sing. I don’t know if Eddie Lampert’s recent quote in The New York Times was intended to be a tutorial on business or if he was just whining about his long and ongoing […]
Pardon my ‘60s pot metaphors of late. There’s just maniacal, seemingly drug-induced behavior happening and it seems to be going viral across many industries. In particular, I think there’s a lot of legalized pot being passed around among Internet start-ups, […]
Second-hand luxury retailer The RealReal just went public with an initial goal to raise $270 million. But on REAL\’s first day of trading they did better than that, selling 15 million shares at $20 each for $300 million. TheRealReal was […]
Many (Western) China watchers have been foretelling the economic decline and collapse of the world’s second-largest economy for decades. This outlook, often fueled by a certain amount of wish fulfillment, has been reinforced of late by a growing list of […]
Oh noooo! Are we going there again? No, I’m not going back to my years of ranting about Eddie Lampert, the brilliant financier who acquired Kmart and Sears in the early 2000s, declaring he was going to return those two […]
Or does he? He’s fooled us before with his abracadabra – now you see it, now you don’t, flimflammery. And at Sears Holdings’ annual meeting last week, he once again waved his wand around and tried to convince all in […]
What’s old is new again. It’s back to the future. Mobile phones are the new stores. These and many other metaphors reflect how the technology age is taking us back in time to century-old retail models. Living with technology on […]
Founded in 1999, Blue Nile set out to disrupt the way people buy diamonds, with a special focus on the engagement ring business, skimming the cream off of traditional jewelry stores’ business. The idea of selling engagement rings online grew […]
“Personal Commerce” and Preemptive Distribution There are two strategic concepts that are imperative for any consumer-facing business to achieve success in the 21st century: personalization and preemptive distribution. As former Apple executive, Ron Johnson’s Genius Bar creation and Apple’s entire […]
