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Hi, I’m Kevin Coupe and this is FaceTime with the Content Guy.
So we’ve spent some time this week talking about the opening of Amazon Go in Seattle, and I’ve had a chance to think a lot about it.
I’ve come to this conclusion. I don’t care how innovative and technologically advanced Amazon Go is. Retailers can compete with it. Seriously.
Of course, retailers are going to have to figure out how to make their checkouts something better than the worse part of the shopping experience. They’re going to have to figure out how to incentivize checkout personnel so that they’re more interested in talking to the customer than to each other. They’re going to have to figure out ways to create modern shopping experiences that are customer-focused, that reach to the highest common denominator, not the lowest.
When I walk out of Amazon Go, I think about Dorothy Lane Market, and it seems to me that it would have no problem competing with this store … because Dorothy Lane stands for something and offers a specific, differentiated shopping experience. Wegmans probably wouldn’t have a problem. HEB probably wouldn’t have a problem. But all of them - and in fact, any retailer that hopes not to have a problem competing - would take this format very seriously. They’d be anything but complacent.
That’s how you compete.
It’s funny. Hanging around Amazon headquarters, you see a lot of young people walking in and out. They’re every gender and ethnicity you can imagine. They come by bike or public transportation, a lot of them bring their dogs to work, many carry cups of coffee and go to lunch and eat salads and go out after work and drink hand crafted beer.
But when they’re at work, they’re changing the world. That’s hard to compete against.
You can’t do business the same old way with the same old people in the same old buildings with the same old formats.
Seriously.
That’s what’s on my mind this morning. As always, I want to hear what is on your mind.
- KC's View:
