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Typically during recessions, we tend to see a large number of mergers and acquisitions (here is a great Mckinsey article on this topic) as struggling companies are strategically bought for pennies on the dollar. While we have seen acquisitions spike during the last four months, specifically within the retail space, we have also seen a […]

Podcast Last week, I talked about the shift towards commoditization that we’re seeing in the retail space today. But, not all retail will become commoditized. Branding is still important, and some categories are too emotional to ever be commoditized. So, what is the opposite of commoditization? Personalization. On the other end of the spectrum from

Podcast Episode Over the past five months, we’ve seen the retail apocalypse take shape at an unprecedented rate, with upwards of 12,000 retail stores closing, and 23 retailers filing for bankruptcy in 2020 so far. Many of the traditional retailers filing for bankruptcy are not actually going out of business, but simply restructuring their debts

Podcast Episode Big Tech vs. Government On Wednesday, four of tech’s largest CEOs were grilled by the congressional antitrust subcommittee via video conference over concerns of possible antitrust violations. But why were they interviewed and what is an “anti-trust” violation? The US government has “anti-trust” laws in place to promote fair competition in an open-market

Is the World Forever Changed? They say it takes 21 days to form a habit…Well, it has been approximately four and a half months since the US has been on some form of lockdown and people are gradually starting to accept this as their “new normal”. It’s hard to imagine things ever going back to

Happy Friday! I wanted to give a quick welcome to all of my new subscribers and say thank you to those of you who have been following me here for a while. I put a ton of work into this weekly newsletter and it means so much to me to have you all here. If

“What if you could buy anything you wanted online?” It’s hard to believe, but this was once a novel concept in the early days of eCommerce. Very few things were offered online, and what you could buy was likely to be poor quality or coming from an unreliable source. Enter Amazon. Jeff Bezos set out