Rishi Taparia - Issue #18
This week Harrod’s chief throws shade on US retailers, Amazon recruits Indian merchants, AirBnB’s Russia problem, designing for AI, RXBAR’s secret to success and more. Enjoy!
Commerce
Retailers’ Emails Are Misfires for Many Holiday Shoppers
Retailers used to be kings of data, appropriately targeting users with promotions and advertisements to encourage specific purchase behavior. They now have fallen behind in the race to personalize digital messaging to consumers using purchase and browsing history.
US department stores are killing themselves, Harrods chief says
Michael Ward, Managing Director at Harrod’s (a major UK based retailer), threw shade at his US counterparts this weekend (rightfully so…), suggesting U.S. department stores have struggled to attract shoppers in recent years because they have failed to introduce new ideas and products. Harrod’s, on the other hand, plans to spend £200m to develop the generation customer experience.
Amazon's Last Mile
Who delivers Amazon orders? Increasingly, it’s plainclothes contractors with few labor protections, driving their own cars, competing for shifts on the company’s own Uber-like platform. Though it’s deployed in dozens of cities and associated with one of the world’s biggest companies, government agencies and customers alike are nearly oblivious to the program’s existence.
Amazon, in Hunt for Lower Prices, Recruits Indian Merchants
Amazon continues to go the extra mile for their customer, now trying to find lower priced products by recruiting Indian merchants. Thousands of Indian sellers have shipped bedding, jewelry, kitchenware and clothing to Amazon warehouses to serve bargain-hunting Americans.
Malls Never Wanted Gyms. Now They Court Them
Mall owners long treated gyms, massage parlors, and billiards halls as unwanted tenants that attracted lower-rent visitors who were unlikely to shop. Now they’re giving health clubs some of their best real estate in an effort to attract anchor tenants that will drive further visits.
FinTech
Inside Airbnb’s Russian Money-Laundering Problem
As companies and marketplaces scale, malicious actors emerge, misusing products in ways that were previously inconceivable. One of the more interesting ones of late - Russian crime forums have been using the home-sharing service to shuffle around cash under the table, sometimes with the help of legitimate Airbnb hosts.
It's 1994 In Cryptocurrency
Much has been made about cryptocurrency, bitcoin and the blockchain, and with Bitcoin touching $10,000 and more Coinbase accounts Charles Schwab accounts, it makes sense why. This article compares the current Crypto Boom to the 90’s tech boom and how much we still have to figure out.
Technology
The Next User You Design For Won’t Be A Human
An interesting piece on the need for companies to include computers as well as humans in their user base. With apps like Waze and Google Maps being leveraged by both humans and other applications as an example, a human-machine hybrid built to do more than any person or computer could accomplish alone is the user of the future.
Ye Olde Photoshoppe
Today image modification simply requires a tap of a smartphone app. But, says Tom Standage, the manipulation of photographs goes back a surprisingly long way. A fun article on the reality that we have been editing photographs since the advent of the photograph!
This famous image of Lincoln...isn't really Lincoln!
Google May Reunite With Nest as It Takes on Amazon
Hardware is hard. Bringing hardware together is good? Google is considering folding home-automation unit Nest into its hardware team, reversing one element of Google’s split two years ago into various businesses under holding company Alphabet.
Random Tidbits
This Chicago Startup Sold Its Protein Bar Company for $600 Million to Kellogg's
Some lessons from the RXBAR story, and how Peter Rahal, co-founder of RXBAR, turned $10,000 and packaging made in Powerpoint into a $600m sale to Kellogg.