Digital Innovation

In episode 166 of Total Retail Talks, Sapna Parikh, executive director of digital and e-commerce at beauty and skincare brand Clarins, discusses the changing digital landscape in luxury beauty. Parikh shares how she built two startups, why interactive in-store technology is changing the way we purchase beauty products, and offers advice to other retailers on how…

In this episode of Retail Right Now, Total Retail's Caitlin Sullivan and Joe Keenan recap Total Retail Tech, an executive retail summit focused on the intersection of retail technology and marketing. Keenan identifies three primary themes to emerge from the conference — implementing a culture of digital innovation and experimentation within your organization; the buzz…

These days, the retail industry is grappling with “Amazonitis.” Amazon.com has disrupted virtually every sector in the retail market, from food to fashion. In order to survive, retailers, particularly brick-and-mortar businesses, have to give people a reason to come to their stores. They must create a distinctive customer experience, and to that end, they should…

Walmart's success doesn't depend on earnings, but rather the story it tells. Amazon.com's revenue climbed since 1998, while net income stayed flat (per FactSet and Recode — see chart below), and Amazon stock rose 1500 percent in that time period. Walmart … welcome to the technology ball. The biggest earnings quarter to watch for Walmart…

New research from Voicebot.ai reports that nearly one in five adults in the U.S. already has access to a smart speaker (e.g., Alexa, Google Home), although they might not necessarily have their own. This equates to roughly 47.3 million people, or 20 percent of the U.S. adult population. Considering that Amazon.com didn’t release its Echo speaker until…

For many consumers today, when they think of online shopping, Amazon.com is top of mind. If we come from their perspective, it isn’t difficult to understand why they love Amazon. It's a marketplace that has almost every product imaginable, which, in most cases, can be delivered the very next day. It can't be denied that…

It wasn’t long ago that running out of a key ingredient for dinner meant rushing to the market, hoping for a short line, and getting home in time to get the food on the table. Just a few years ago, shopping for something more personal, like a watch, took you to every jewelry store in…

Walmart is testing the use of storage and retrieval robotics, called Alphabot, to increase the speed of online grocery order pickup, according to a company blog post. The technology, which was developed in collaboration with retail automation company Alert Innovation, is being installed in a section of a Salem, N.H. supercenter, which will also be a dedicated…

Traditional retailers must commit to digital transformation in order to streamline, differentiate and enable new business models.

Sameer Hassan is the senior vice president of enterprise product strategy and user experience at Williams-Sonoma Inc., where he heads up product management, UX and product analytics for the WSI brands. We caught up over lunch recently to learn more about WSI’s culture of innovation. Holly Vander Wall: At WSI, you’re working with cutting-edge technology such as virtual…