When you edit a website devoted to an incredibly evolving industry like retail you get lots of information across your desk and lots of views on what is important. This particular article has a lot of take-aways that help identify what is now important in retailing including a primary role for bricks’n’mortar.
It is talking about New Retail, based on developments in China, but is written by a Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist and a Venture Capital Analyst who has written in a number of publications.
New Retail is described as “a relentless focus on customer experience, and extreme attention to details.” It is embodied in many Japanese bricks’n’mortar retailers which this article points out are growing faster in Japan than online. Compare that with the experience in other parts of the world where traditional retailers are struggling.
The authors talk about “online going offline” and the relevance of technology as e-commerce giants like Amazon and Alibaba aggressively tackling retail markets but they think there is something more important – “But in our opinion, moving e-commerce offline is only half of the story of New Retail. The other more important half is about selling beautifully designed, quickly manufactured, and frequently iterated products at the lowest prices possible, making customers pleasantly surprised. Creating such an easy and intuitive customer experience requires a lot of painstaking effort. Costs must be cut. Manufacturing and delivery must be streamlined. Customer feedback must be collected rapidly and acted on instantly. This is where New Retail can revolutionize traditional retail.”
They conclude the article with the proposition that New Retail involves getting your customers to ask an important question - "How in the world do they sell something so beautiful and high-quality so cheaply?"
The full article is here – What Is New Retail?
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