This might become a weekly newsletter of what I've seen in Retail and Consumer Goods and thought was interesting. I've aimed to pick some pieces of Retail and CPG-related news, explaining what they mean, with analysis and opinion to put things in context. It's just getting started. Feel free to spread it around - and let me know what you think: what you like, what you don't, what you'd like to see more of.
🗞 News
Early signs of an improving economy, but consumers haven’t opened their wallets. With the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re constantly hearing about the stretch and pull of balancing our lives and livelihoods. Diving into our livelihoods, we see and feel a disconnect between Main Street consumer spending and Wall Street market performance. Consumer spending fell 13.6% in April during shelter in place orders, while savings hit a historic 33% rate, but now, states are beginning to re-open and the market is up - which could be a leading indicator that consumers will follow. That’s held true so far as spending has grown, but it is still down ~20% YoY for the beginning of June according to 1010data’s credit and debit card usage analysis. Link and Link
As COVID-19 Shifts Consumer Demand, Inventory Management Must Go Granular. Opposing philosophies of top-down versus bottom-up approaches played out quite a bit in governmental responses to the pandemic. Now, as retailers carefully yet urgently push to re-open wherever possible to recover revenue, nuanced granularity comes into play. To be fair, granular analytics have been proven to boost growth for some time now; it’s just that this time, it’s more of a pain reliever than a gain increaser. For concept’s sake, think of how measuring store proximity to a rapidly developing COVID hotspot plays a role in how high or low traffic to the store will be, whether the store should adjust operating hours, how that influences inventory and out-of-stocks, and the needs to get those hyper localized, time sensitive insights at a higher frequency. Link $
US food prices see historic jump and are likely to stay high. If the narrow aisles of grocery shopping weren’t stressful enough lately, now we have historic price increases at play as well. “The Labor Department reports that the 2.6% jump in April food prices was the largest monthly increase in 46 years.” Much of the price increases are seemingly demand related, first as consumers stocked up, and then as more people cooked at home continuously. Supply decreases now seem to be more causal, as meat prices rise due to illnesses among slaughterhouse workers supply chains all over are getting hit. Link
🔮 Reading
The store of the future is coming this summer. Here’s what it looks like. One way or another, people are going to shop - maybe now it’s for staples, but eventually more discretionary purchases will rebound. COVID-19 incited drastic changes in retail as consumers went online. Lots of speculation is surfacing on how retail will adapt to the next normal. Link and Link
When Will Consumers Feel Safe Again? Who will feel safe? Doing what? These questions like most, are hyper-nuanced. Interesting look here by activity, by gender, generation, political leaning, and more. Link
3 Trends From Top Supply Chain Organizations. Gartner seems to be calling out technology-aided transformation in Supply Chain - nothing too new - but the move towards purpose-driven seems to be getting an extra push lately. Link
😮 Interesting things
Gucci’s new tech bet: Personalized video shopping. Link
Why Does Zoom Exhaust You? Science Has an Answer. Link $
TV Streaming: Best Options For Building Your Own Bundle. Link
📊 Stats
Amazon's own delivery fleet is now the fourth‑largest US delivery network. Link
Thanks for reading. Again, I'm toying with the idea of turning this into a weekly newsletter. What do you think? What topics for Retail and Consumer Goods/Brands would be most interesting for you?
