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Each month, our Leaderboard reports the best performers from among 1,500 indie stores, 3,000 brands, and 300,000 products with no man hours. Leaderboard results are automatically tallied and published on the first of each month; it’s as if I have an omnipotent robot that does this work for me. Automation like this is crucial to running a successful business.
Amazon, Walmart, and other retail giants spend massively on automation because this will decide the winners.
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The Wall St. Journal reports on Walmart's progress against Amazon.
Article highlights:
- Walmart delivered 2.5b items on the same day in 2023.
- Walmart delivered 5b items on the same day in 2024.
- E-commerce generates 18% of Walmart's revenue but is not profitable. (This is much like Amazon, which didn’t report a profit for the first 10 years. Walmart is running its online business at a loss.)
- Walmart relies on its own driver fleet named Spark, which it started in 2018, to
We’re seeing all major wedding registry merchants, such as Amazon and Zola, offer a post-registry completion discount. We tracked 11 major retailers and found their discounts ranged from 10% to 20%—with the largest, most successful players offering the highest (20%).
Post-Registry Discount/Retailer:
- 20% Amazon
- 20% Bloomingdale's
- 20% Zola
- 15% Anthropologie
- 15% Crate & Barrel
- 15% CB2
- 15% Target
- 10-20% Macy's
- 10% Pottery Barn
- 10% West Elm
- 10% Williams Sonoma
Results recorded
Each month, our Leaderboard reports the best performers from among 1,500 indie stores, 3,000 brands, and 300,000 products with no man hours. Leaderboard results are automatically tallied and published on the first of each month; it’s as if I have an omnipotent robot that does this work for me. Automation like this is crucial to running a successful business.
Amazon, Walmart, and other retail giants spend massively on automation because this will decide the winners.
...Read more of post
The Wall St. Journal shares that Vail Resorts relies heavily on its annual ski pass, called the Epic Pass, to steer its success. The pass, which the company launched in 2008 and now costs $982, gives the holder a few benefits, including the ability to ski at any of Vail’s 42 mountains, save 20% off rentals, and more. The company sells about 2.3m passes a year, and about 75% of visitors use the pass. One has to buy the pass before the season.
The resort raises the
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The Wall St. Journal shares this weekend that Walmart has automated 50% of its fulfillment process, bringing down fulfillment costs by 40%. This 40% in savings will thereafter be used as a pricing advantage against indie stores (and retailers of any size).
Walmart, like Amazon, is spending billions of dollars to accomplish this. The goal is to spend $1b today to save $1m tomorrow on labor and sell $1m more tomorrow. Long term, these numbers snowball and are in
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Last week, I wrote about the desire for Big Retail (i.e. Amazon, Walmart, and other large retailers) to automate all parts of their supply chain. This weekend’s The Wall St. Journal shares that Amazon will spend about $105b on AI this year. (Alphabet will spend $75b and Meta $65b.)
AI is an automation tool. Indie stores will be expected to offer many of these tools because Big Retail does. But, as the article notes, these tools are very expensive and
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The Wall St. Journal editorial board shared yesterday that inspecting an international package going through customs costs us taxpayers about $5. In 2016, President Obama raised the duty-free limit from $200 to $800 so our customs agents could inspect fewer packages. I feel this change was a gift to the customs agents—but bad for citizens and indie shops.
Here’s why:
First, it allowed a lot more shipments with drugs to enter the U.S. A 2021 study found 24,000
The New York Times gives an update on the executive branch suspending the de minimis rules for China shipments and adding a 10% tariff on Chinese goods.
Excerpt:
“Lower-value parcels from China, which previously were tariff-free, now face not only the 10 percent tariff but also the many complex tariffs on every category of goods that these shipments previously skirted entirely.”
I believe these new rules will help our indie stores and many others. I think goods