Over the past several years, one of the biggest buzzwords in retail has been “omnichannel,” but it has typically only been used to describe retailers beefing up their resources to conduct more business online. Walmart, the largest retailer in the country, has made significant investments—organically and through acquisitions—to try to compete with the number two retailer, Amazon, for consumers’ online shopping dollar.
But with all of the innovation in e-commerce, online sales still remain a tiny percentage of all retail sales. Brick-and-mortar is definitely not dead, as demonstrated by Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods last year and the opening of Amazon Go stores.
Recently, traditional retailers have begun to reimagine their physical presence, while pure-play online retailers have been showing up in shopping centers.
In these videos, George Blankenship, a former executive at Apple and Tesla, shares his thoughts on the evolution of brick-and-mortar stores; what it will take for retailers to evolve their strategies to compete; and explains why he believes Amazon Go will completely disrupt the convenience store concept.
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This is part 1 of a 3-part series on
George Blankenship on the Newest Evolution of Retail
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