News English — Omni-Channel Retailing

NRF2024 was a full return to normal following the pandemic. Visitor numbers back to full force. Very few if any at all exhibitor cancellations. New food innovation zone and some exciting MHE displays. Overall, a lack of excitement despite all the AI talk.

The view of all vendors is that automation will become more important as a result of Covid-19. While this is not unexpected, should vendors be more cautious? Economic activity has ground to a halt in much of the world. Grocers, medical device suppliers and pharmaceutical manufacturers appears to be the only winners in our Covid-19 pandemic world. More specifically, eGrocery has been one of the main beneficiaries of Covid. However, these companies have been so successful that they have had to limit access to their sites. Source: FT.com, March 28, 2020 The outsized demand for online grocer's services has led...

1 RWB remains the number one event for cross border trading on marketplaces despite the understandable cancellations from participating marketplaces from South Korea and China. Coupang would have been an exciting addition to the many exhibiting marketplaces at the conference, but we are looking forward to seeing them in 2021 instead! 5 The conference has now been running for five years and 2020 saw the extension of the conference from a one day event to a two day event, inculding some very exciting content including data analytics and augemented reality. 7 The number of years Gerald Ratner spent in bed...

Direct to Consumer As the retail industry has changed, more and more brand owners have decided to reach out directly to consumers instead of relying on a network of distributors, wholesale partners and retailers. The advantages for brand owners can be hugely attractive. In particular the increased margins and the ability to control your brand. Lego is the latest in a long line of brand owners which have pivoted from a wholesale model to an own-operated-store (OOS) revenue model. (source: FT.com) D2C vary by retail sector Fashion brands have been some of the more prolific brnad owners to pivot into...

Orderwise to launch in-house developed robot in the next months! Oh, and IRX was not that great a trade show.