March 10, 2015

Must Watch Omnichannel-Themed Future Of Business Video

Yes, you have fifteen free minutes today to watch this (click here if you do not see a video box below).



Around the six minute mark, the speaker mentions Macy's - he talks about how he believes that pure play e-commerce is dead - that pure-play e-commerce must go into retail to grow - and then he talks about Macy's closing stores and thrashing $40k - $80k per year jobs, replacing them with fewer jobs & very low paying jobs, while killing off unprofitable in-store sales in the process.

#Omnichannel!

But more important - this individual crafted a story ... he knitted together your business and Apple and Amazon and Facebook and Google ... and he predicts where he thinks the short-term (i.e. 5 year horizon) trends are headed.

I am not a fan of the omnichannel thesis, and for good reason. You're being sold a bill of goods. Many of the biggest retailers are talking about closing stores (though you're being told that omnichannel will save your stores). E-commerce businesses are talking about opening stores. What you are actually observing, in real-time, is not omnichannel, but instead is a Darwinian change in commerce ... you are observing the end of the Baby Boomer era ... those retailers are going to be destroyed by the omnichannel movement ... and you are observing the birth of the business models that replace them ... e-commerce brands (and in the next 5-10 years, mobile brands) that cater to Millenials and those who come after Millenials.

Think about it ... this is a change in how to build a business ... you build with low-cost customer acquisition (social + mobile), then you use venture funding to get past $100,000,000 without the fixed-cost retail infrastructure ... and once you get past $100,000,000, you move into retail to get to a billion and beyond. There's going to be a lot of dead retail space that newer companies will be able to get, cheaply, too. To summarize:

  1. Develop the proof-of-concept with low cost (free) customer acquisition.
  2. Use traditional e-commerce methods and venture funding to build the business without the fixed-cost headaches in retail.
  3. Expand into retail at the very time when Baby Boomer retailers die off, allowing you to get cheap real estate.

Everything kind of makes sense, when you think about it that way.

I promise you - this is the best business video you'll watch all month. And it's free. You're not paying $600 to hear a vendor-themed message centered around a product/solution the vendor wishes to sell to you. 

So please, watch the video.

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