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Category: Retail & eCommerce

eCommerce, Online Retail & Retail News

  • Chipotle CEO Going Digital to Create a ‘Frictionless Experience’

    Chipotle CEO Going Digital to Create a ‘Frictionless Experience’

    Chipotle is moving in a digital direction, with their digital business up 48 percent over last year. The company has introduced a new app, digital lines, digital pickup shelves, and a mobile pickup window in an effort to create a “frictionless experience” for its customers, according to Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol.

    Brian Niccol, Chipotle Mexican Grill CEO, discussed their digital strategy this morning on CNBC:

    Chipotle App Creating a Frictionless Digital Experience

    What we’re trying to do is remove any friction and get people more access and we’re having a lot of success with that. Our digital business is now up to 11 percent, which is up 48 percent over last year. What’s really exciting is we’re seeing people continue to adopt the utilization of the app and then all the new access channels that we’re creating, whether it’s these digital pick-up-shelves or delivery, we’re just getting a tremendous response from our customers.

    Introducing Digital Lines and Shelves

    One of the things that are really powerful for our company is we’ve got what we call a Digital Make Line and it is completely separate from the Customer Facing Line. When you come into the restaurant and you go down that Customer Facing Line if you’ve placed a digital order it doesn’t get in the way of that experience. We’re also putting in place these Digital Pickup Shelves so that when you order ahead, you literally can walk in grab your food and go, a completely frictionless experience.

    Our digital line requires fewer people to run it versus the front line. The thing that’s great is what we’ve seen is this digital business is highly incremental, so the additional labor necessary to support the incremental sales it works really well for us.

    Testing a New Mobile Pickup Window

    We’ve got the new mobile pickup window in four restaurants right now. The way it works is you order ahead and you pick your time and then you know you literally come right by the restaurant, we’ve got a window, your food comes out the window and off you go. We’re seeing tremendous response to that and it’s in a market in Ohio and a market in Texas. We’re gonna start adding more restaurants in 2019, so you’re gonna see us building more restaurants that have the ability for that mobile pickup.

    Second Lines in All 2,500 Stores in 2019

    The thing that is happening right now on a broad scale basis are these second lines. We’ve digitized them, we’re in about 750 restaurants we’ll have all 2,500 restaurants done by the end of 2019. To accompany that we’re putting in these digital shelves so that literally you can skip the whole process.

  • James Patterson Says He is Releasing New Book ‘The Chef’ on Facebook Messenger

    James Patterson Says He is Releasing New Book ‘The Chef’ on Facebook Messenger

    James Patterson is releasing his next book “The Chef” on Facebook Messenger. It will be a hybrid combining the written word with video and photography in an attempt to appeal to the millions of millennials that are on Facebook and tend not to read literature.

    James Patterson, author of “The Chef” discussed this novel marketing strategy of releasing a hybrid book with video in an interview on CNBC:

    It’s About Drawing Attention to Books

    This is about just drawing attention to publishing to books. Books don’t get as much so we’re trying new things. What this is and what’s exciting about it to me is you read the book and then it goes to film and you read the book and it goes to film and you read the book and it goes to film. It’s kind of like a bookie, a book meets a movie, and it’s free on Facebook Messenger.

    Why did I do that? Why would I give away a book for free? It just draws more attention to books which I think publishers need to do more of that. It’s a good story and you’ve never ever seen anything like it. It’s just so different.

    Combining Film, Photography, Books, and Text

    I think that a lot of people go out to Messenger and it’s about a three-hour experience, the whole thing, and that’ll be a success. We’re gonna put it out in book form in February and it will be longer and available at a regular price.

    Literally, you’re reading text and then all of a sudden you see film of what you were reading about. Then it’ll come back and then it might go to photography the next thing and then it might go to newspaper headlines, so it’s just different. This just goes on for about three hours and you can watch it on your phone obviously or on your computer.

    I love that idea of combining film, photography, books, and text. We went to Facebook and they said, yeah we’re in. They thought it was an exciting thing to do and different and they need content obviously. Well, I shouldn’t say what they need, that’s for Mark and Sheryl and I don’t know, but I think they need content, so here we are.

    We Need Publishers That Are Willing to Experiment

    I think it’s a mixed bag. I think independent bookstores are doing better. The whole retail business is in flux, obviously, because so much is done online. So hopefully, Barnes & Noble will rebound and I think they will. We miss Borders.

    Maybe 20 years from now, who knows, maybe it’ll all be done online, but for the moment in this country we really need literature and that can’t be done online right now. We need good publishers that are willing to experiment and do things that are unusual.

    Amazon Has Lightened Up Which is Great

    I think Amazon has lightened up which I think is great. They’re in a position to do a lot of good. Initially, the sort of back and forth between them and publishers I didn’t think was healthy. I do think we need strong publishers and I think we need bookstores out in the world right now. As they say, that may change.

    I’ve changed my tune a little bit. I think they’re doing a better job now, there isn’t that back and forth thing that they were having with publishers. I like that Jeff is giving away a lot of money, I think that’s good.

    Facebook Messenger… Yay.

  • Ethan Allen CEO: Brick and Mortar by Itself is Not Relevant

    Ethan Allen CEO: Brick and Mortar by Itself is Not Relevant

    Ethan Allen CEO Farooq Kathwari made a bold point for a furniture retailer in a recent interview, following their quarterly earnings announcement: Brick and mortar by itself is not relevant.

    “Today we know that brick and mortar by itself is not relevant unless you are in a position to provide service,” Kathwari said. “Providing an interior design service is a great advantage and that’s what we are focused on.”

    Kathwari says the key is to use online not just for sales but also for customer outreach.

    Farooq Kathwari, chairman, president, and chief executive officer at Ethan Allen talks about how the company has made brick and mortar relevant again:

    Brick and Mortar by Itself is Not Relevant

    I discussed in our earnings call about the fact that today you have to differentiate yourself. You have to be in a position to be relevant. We have at Ethan Allen 1,200 interior designers that work for us in North America and about 500 internationally. We have 200 design centers. These 200 design centers are like brick and mortar.

    Today we know that brick and mortar by itself is not relevant unless you are in a position to provide service. Providing an interior design service is a great advantage and that’s what we are focused on.

    Less than 5 Percent of Sales are Online

    We absolutely are trying to appeal to millennials online. However, our online strategy is a bit different. We have today over 600 of our interior designers chatting online. So we are online. Our designers are working with clients and then bringing them into the design centers because we want them to see the product. We want them to experience it because this is not selling small stuff or toys, this is a serious purchase. Our online is very active and we are bringing people in.

    Our advertising is more in the traditional mediums and the digital mediums. We spend a fair amount on direct mail to about 2 million households a month. Digital mediums are strong. A combination of the two is very relevant. One has to do that.

  • Trade Expert says Amazon Uses a Loophole to Import Almost Everything Duty-Free

    Trade Expert says Amazon Uses a Loophole to Import Almost Everything Duty-Free

    Amazon is using creative tactics that enable it to avoid import taxes on almost everything it sells by making every item sold a single sale that is under $800, according to trade expert and former Trump advisor Curtis Ellis.

    Curtis Ellis, a former Trump trade advisor, explains the details of this tactic below:

    Amazon Importing Almost Everything Duty-Free

    The U.S. government, U.S. Customs, imposes a tax on imports, a tariff or a duty. However, there is an exception. If you go to Scottland and buy a sweater that is less than $800 you can bring it back into the country duty-free. Just put it in your suitcase or have it shipped back and you don’t pay anything. Amazon uses this loophole to import virtually everything worth less than $800 duty-free.

    This Amazon Tactic is Helping China Avoid Tariffs

    They will buy 100,000 sweaters from Scottland, Ireland, or probably China and park them in a warehouse in Tijuana, Mexico. Then when people press purchase now to place their order they break up those 100,000 sweaters into one package, one package, one package and ship them into the country as if they were bought by one person on one day and Amazon had nothing to do with it. They bring it all in duty-free. China does not suffer the impact of tariffs on some imports to America thanks to Amazon.

    Outdated Law Subsidizing Chinese Shipping

    A couple of weeks ago President Trump announced that we are withdrawing from the International Postal Union. This is another example. We entered into this treaty ages ago and it subsidizes packages and shipping so that it is cheaper to send a package from Bejing to New York than it is to ship from Los Angeles to New York. We were giving China this break as if it’s a developing country like Haiti or something. It’s now like the second largest economy in the world and they’re still getting that same break.

    These rules, called The De Minimis Exception, were written before there was an Internet and has never been updated. It’s just another example of how Washington just sleepwalks through everything.

  • Kynetic CEO Michael Rubin: We Owe All of Our Success to Amazon

    Kynetic CEO Michael Rubin: We Owe All of Our Success to Amazon

    Kynetic CEO Michael Rubin says that they owe all of their success to Amazon. “I owe all of our success to Amazon because we are such a big believer in what they were doing, a completely differentiative business model,” Rubin said. “What we’re doing is really all about vertical commerce.”

    Michael Rubin, CEO of Kynetic which also owns Fanatics, Rue Gilt Groupe, and ShopRunner and is one of the largest privately held companies in the United States, recently discussed how his companies have become so successful in an interview with Jim Cramer of Mad Money:

    What I See is How Much Opportunity There is In China

    What I see as an entrepreneur is how much opportunity there is in China. When I went there it’s one of those things you had to see to believe it. We had 45 million people watch our preseason basketball game. Think about that, 45 million people watching a preseason basketball game! That’s like half of a Super Bowl rating. That’s home rabid the basketball fans are in China.

    So for me, I think we have nothing but growth opportunity in China. We’re just launching Fanatics there. It’s a massive opportunity and we think we could build a multi-billion dollar business there. I couldn’t be more bullish on the opportunity.

    I Owe All of Our Success to Amazon

    Fanatics is a really exciting business. I’ll break this down really simply for you. I had a core belief that Amazon and Alibaba we’re going to control ecommerce everywhere in the world. So if you have that belief, you’ve got two options, completely differentiate yourself or go out of business. I’m not a guy who wants to go out of business so you’ve got to completely differentiate yourself.

    People say all the time, “How do you feel about Amazon?” I owe all of our success to Amazon because we are such a big believer in what they were doing, a completely differentiative business model. What we’re doing is really all about vertical commerce. We design, develop, and sell directly to the consumer most of the products that we have, so it’s a completely different business. Think about it like an H&M or a Zara, but in the sports license business and mostly online.

    Kynetic is All About Verticality

    We’re designing the jersey, well actually in the case of the jersey, Nike designs the jersey, but going forward we’re actually gonna manufacture the jersey and sell directly to the consumer. But I’ll tell you, just over the Super Bowl specifically, we sold two and a half million units of Eagles merchandise. Two and a half millions units of Eagles merchandise within a few weeks after the Super Bowl and we design those products, we manufacture those products, we ship them directly to the consumer.

    Because of the verticality, the consumer gets a wider assortment of merchandise, they get anything they want, they get it more quickly, and the leagues and teams make more money. We are also using that data to better communicate with the fans, so it’s a win-win for everyone.

    If you really think about the sports license business and if you think about the sports leagues, what a league wants and what a team wants is to have the best marketing brand in the world. Nike is this incredible brand, but they don’t wake up every day and go to bed every night thinking about how do I maximize every sale in the licensed sports business. So what the leagues did was smart, they said let’s split this from one set of rights to two sets of rights. Let’s work with Nike to be this incredible marketing partner and then really use it to drive the Nike brand and the NFL brand. At the same time let’s work with Fanatics to drive transactions. Now you’ve got two companies instead of one really growing the business as much as possible.

    We Made the Businesses What They Are Today

    For us, the truth be told and people ask this all the time, “Was eBay smart for selling the businesses? First, eBay was very focused, they didn’t want to be in the owned inventory business. Number two, these were teeny companies. When I bought Fanatics back from eBay it was a 250 million dollar company. It’s going to do $2.3 billion dollars this year. It has a completely different strategy. When we bought back Rue la la from eBay it was a $200 million business, then we bought Gilt and now it’s close to a billion-dollar business. ShopRunner didn’t have $100 million in transactions and next year it’s going to do three or four billion dollars in transactions.

    We took these businesses, we’ve developed the strategies, we’ve evolved them, and we’ve made them into what they are today. And Here’s the most exciting thing, we’re just getting going.

    My Loyalty is All About Who Makes Us the Most Money

    Other than the Sixers my loyalty is all about who makes us the most money, so I’m very easy to swap teams. If I own the Panthers I would be rooting to destroy the Eagles. I mean I love Jeffrey, he’s my buddy, but business is business and sports is sports. You’re there for one reason which is to win. I actually always laugh when people come up to me before a game and say, “Hey good luck.” I wish I could tell them good luck, but I’m like for the next three hours I hope you die. I love you before the game and I love you after the game, but there’s no love during the game.

  • SiriusXM CEO Jim Meyer: Audio is Thriving Like Never Before

    SiriusXM CEO Jim Meyer: Audio is Thriving Like Never Before

    It’s been an eventful quarter for SiriusXM, attaining their highest ever quarter of revenue at $1.47 billion and their highest ever adjusted EBITDA at $589 million.

    In the earning call SiriusXM CEO Jim Meyer talked about adding 300,000 net new self-pay subs in the third quarter, Amazon partnership, Pandora Acquisition, Connected Vehicle initiatives paying off, and how it’s going with Automatic Labs, which they acquired last year.

    SiriusXM CEO Jim Meyer opening statement during 2018 Q3 Earnings Call:

    Thrilled With Third Quarter Results

    I can’t think of a more exciting time for all of us at SiriusXM and I’m thrilled with the results we were able to deliver in the third quarter.

    With this momentum, I’m once again pleased to increase our guidance for 2018 subscribers, revenue and EBITDA growth. We are driving more subscribers through a bigger enabled fleet and maintaining our strong content lineup as you would expect us, both of which position the company for tremendous future success.

    But we’re going even further with our proposed acquisition of Pandora Media, our investments in 360L, our next-generation in-vehicle platform and our vastly expanded push to drive engagement outside of the car with better streaming apps, including our new marketing agreement with Amazon.

    Added 300,000 Net New Self-Pay Subscribers

    SiriusXM added about 300,000 net new self-pay subs in the third quarter, similar to the level we attained in last year’s third quarter. We overcame the headwind inherent to a bigger base by achieving one of our lowest ever churn rates for any third quarter and our self-pay base now stands at 28.5 million subscribers with total paid subscribers reaching 33.7 million.

    I’m thrilled we attained our highest ever quarter of revenue at $1.47 billion, our highest ever adjusted EBITDA at $589 million and our highest ever EBITDA margin, reaching 40% for the first time. We attained this margin by coupling strong revenue growth with equally impressive expense management.

    Auto sales continued at a high level in the third quarter, with a SAAR of about 16.9 million and I’m hearing in my conversations with the OEMs, they expect solid numbers to finish out this year. Our OEM relationships remain strong. Since the start of the third quarter alone, we extended agreements with Audi, Jaguar, Land Rover, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, and Volvo. As you might expect, with these OEMs and others, we are planning the future of our service in their vehicles well into the 2020s.

    We are receiving higher penetration commitments at some OEMs, more firm 360L deployment schedules and in some cases, improved financial terms. Car buyers love SiriusXM and OEMs have recognized this by agreeing to prominently place us in the dash for many years to come.

    Next year, we will make meaningful progress on additional 360L rollouts as we cycle into the 2020 model year. We prefer to let our OEM friends make their own announcements and I expect they will be doing that as we approach these higher deployments in the back half of 2020.

    Making Tangible Progress with Connected Vehicle Services

    A few years ago when SiriusXM began to invest in the connected vehicle services business, I told you it would be a marathon, not a sprint. And now, you can see us making tangible progress in ramping our CV services unit, which provides safety, security and convenience features to consumers at 12 different automotive brands. We are now achieving strong double-digit revenue growth here and seeing positive cash flow contributions from this business.

    Several OEMs, including Fiat Chrysler, Nissan, and Toyota, are ramping penetration of our CV services in their vehicles and we can’t be more thrilled at how this long-term investment is now paying off. This is yet another way that we also remain important to OEMs as they assess their entertainment and connectivity ecosystems.

    At Automatic Labs, which we acquired last year, we have an aftermarket solution to enable smart services in almost any car on the road. And here, we are also following a very deliberate strategy. Automatic recently launched a new Dealer Program to significantly grow our distribution and it’s already live at several pilot dealerships. This program enables dealers to offer car buyers three years of free crash alert and connected main services as well as free premium services like roadside assistance for six months.

    We expect dealers will recognize the opportunity to improve their long-term relationships with their customers and hopefully encourage repeat buyers. I’ve always been a student in the importance of a good distribution model. For years, the OEM market has served SiriusXM extremely well, first in the new channel, then in the used and significant growth opportunities still exist for us with the OEMs. But with the ubiquity of smartphones and the growing population of connected devices like smart speakers, enormous new opportunities to consume audio are being created.

    Audio is Thriving Like Never Before

    Audio is thriving like never before. This has created opportunities for many new businesses to flourish and for existing businesses like ours to evolve and grow in new directions. And let me reiterate, this is not a zero-sum game. The entire pie of audio consumption is actually growing. Clearly, we remain focused on extending our winning position in the vehicle, but we are also following through on our efforts to drive engagement and subscribers out of the car as well.

    When SiriusXM’s existing subscribers use our service elsewhere, it’s bound to increase the value proposition and make our relationship stickier. And by deploying our unmatched content lineup across improved apps and ever more connected devices, we now have an opportunity to grow with customers who may want a subscription that isn’t tied to a vehicle.

    There’s More to Come Between SiriusXM and Amazon

    In June 2017, we first launched the SiriusXM Alexa skill set to enable our service on Amazon’s Echo devices. It’s clear to me that audio on these smart speakers just clicks. It works beautifully. We immediately found traction with hundreds of thousands of our subscribers rushing to use the service on Amazon’s devices via the easy-to-use Alexa’s voice interface.

    As we began to contemplate a further push out of the car, part of our Bring Us Home campaign, we knew that collaborating with a skilled distributor like Amazon could drive a significant lift to our service outside of the car. And Amazon knows that diverse audio program is probably the biggest value driver today in the smart speaker universe.

    Last week, we announced a new promotion that allows existing Echo owners to easily obtain a free trial of SiriusXM. We are also bundling a free third-generation Echo Dot with six months or greater service commitments to our streaming-only or All Access plans. We are thrilled to be working with a dynamic company like Amazon. And importantly, we’re not just present on their platform, but actively cooperating with them to cross-promote and market to their base.

    I’ve always said I just want people to listen to our service wherever they want, however they want and it has to be easy. There’s more to come between SiriusXM and Amazon as we think of additional ways to extend this relationship. So, stay tuned.

    Creating the Best Audio Programming Available

    All of these efforts in technology and distribution would be for naught without our creative team, all of whom who work tirelessly for our subscribers, casting a wide net to capture and create the best audio programming available. We continue to launch specially created music channels from major artists that have proven to be a hit with our listeners such as Dave Matthews Band Radio. We presented fiery live performances just for subscribers like The Killers in the Hamptons, curated a special channel all summer long from The Beach Boys and then topped it off by reuniting them for the first time in years for a Town Hall in Hollywood.

    We’ve added provocative talent in talk and sports with a daily show from CNN’s Chris Cuomo, where callers can reach him directly, a new show from Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson, the return of Brett Favre’s very popular show on our NFL channel and we’ve added a new program highlighting women in sports.

    And while we know that sports fans love us, we work harder than ever to get them closer to the teams they follow. For that, we have just launched two exclusive sports channels, SiriusXM Big Ten Radio, and SiriusXM Big 12 Radio, that will deliver fans and alumni across the country in-depth access to Big Ten and Big 12 focus sports, talk and news plus extensive live game coverage.

    These channels join SiriusXM’s unparalleled lineup of college sports programming, which now features the all-college sports channel, ESPNU Radio, plus 24/7 channels focused on each of the Power Five athletic conferences, ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC. Quite honestly, with the result – with the recent addition of these conference channels, we dominate college sports coverage.

    A Business That is Humming Along and Throws Off Cash

    SiriusXM clearly has a great collection of content to match its excellence business model. The company’s high monetization and high variable margins let us make more and more cash flow as we grow bigger. This is a business that is humming along and it throws off cash in a highly predictable way that investors love and we continue to give that cash back to stockholders, $334 million of share repurchases in the third quarter plus nearly $50 million of dividends because after all, it’s your money.

    Let me be crystal clear about this. Nothing is changing in our capacity or our commitment to continue making significant capital returns to our stockholders for years to come, but we’re also investing in future platforms, hiring talented data scientists and software developers and constantly seeking out new content our subscribers will love. All this we do and we’ll keep doing.

    Goal is to Link Non-Converting Customers Back to Pandora

    This quarter, I’m pleased we were able to make a much bigger step towards setting the future path of our company with our proposed acquisition of Pandora Media. Over the years, Pandora has built a huge user base of approximately 70 million Americans and scaled $1-billion-plus advertising business.

    Over the past year, Roger Lynch and his team have taken important steps, so that Pandora’s business will thrive in the future. By sitting on the board for the past year, we’ve learned a tremendous amount about Pandora’s business and we have concluded we can do many things better together versus apart. Number one is the ability to cross-promote across the two platforms that could come from sharing of listening data and contact data.

    In addition, at SiriusXM, we are running about 23 million trials in new and used cars this year. And the truth is the flip side of our conversion statistics will tell you that most people don’t want to pay for radio at the end of the day. I feel there is a strong opportunity if we can link non-converters back to a Pandora or maybe a Pandora with a bit more content in a way that makes our combined business bigger, better and more profitable. There are many ways we believe that one plus one will exceed two very quickly and we plan to give you additional color on that over the next few months.

    Last Thursday, we filed for Hart-Scott approval of the Pandora acquisition. This morning, the go-shop period of our deal with Pandora expired uneventfully. We’re planning to get together and sharpen our pencils on our integration plan very soon. We and Pandora expect to file our S-4, which includes the proxy statement and prospectus with the SEC in the next few days as Pandora moves towards a stockholder vote later this year. We continue to expect to close in the first quarter.

    Last week, while I was out in Oakland for a Pandora board meeting, I had the privilege of speaking with a large group of Pandora’s talented employees. It was fantastic to talk about our shared future, what we can do with all of our financial resources, vast troves of data, unmatched content, enormous user bases and some of the most talented people in radio and technology. I am confident that together, these two companies will be even stronger.

    In the meantime, it’s full speed ahead at SiriusXM with a laser focus on reaching or exceeding our new higher 2018 guidance, exactly as you would hope and expect.

  • MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and His Story of Hope

    MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and His Story of Hope

    The Inventor and CEO of MyPillow, Mike Lindell, was at a Trump rally in Houston tonight where he talked passionately and from his heart about his past drug addiction and how he feels that MyPillow is a platform for hope.

    Mike Lindell also announced a new website and program that will soon be launched called the Lindell Recovery Network that will match drug addicts with stories of hope designed to motivate addicts to get help.

    Here is MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s story of hope:

    I Was a Crack Cocaine Addict

    I used to be a crack cocaine addict. On January 16, 2009, by the grace of God, I prayed and I was free from all these addictions. I’m actually going to be at the White House on Wednesday for the opiate crisis that we are working on and trying to solve all these things for the opiate addicts, such a tragedy now. I want to get the right people voted in so that we can keep on that path of getting rid of some of the regulations so we can help everybody.

    What I’m doing personally is helping the faith-based treatment centers. These are the ones that work; there’s Salvation Army, Teen Challenge, and Union Gospel. These are the treatment centers that have worked in our country. The Salvation Army goes back all the way to the late 1800’s.

    Announces The Lindell Recovery Network

    What I have that’s going to be coming out, I’ll tell it here first, is called The Lindell Recovery Network. If you are a 22-year-old opiate addict, you put in your age and what you are addicted to and all these stories that I’m gathering of hope come down from people your age. So you will go, wow, they all made it through.

    Then I’m going to be like their tour guide on the website where I’m going to say you go over here and see all these centers of hope I have vetted in this country over the last year. I’ll say you go to one of these centers and get help and when you come out I will be there for you.

    I’m Going to Have Pain Mentors

    I’m going to have pain mentors and I want to be one of the biggest employers in this country where I’m going to employ all of these mentors to help them when they come out. A lot of times when addicts come out of treatment they don’t have trust, people aren’t going to trust them right away. I’m going to be doing it for the prisons too.

    There are so many things that the President is working on now… they always try and stop things especially with the faith-based centers. Okay, we will give you money but you have to take Jesus out of the equation. That’s wrong. You need these centers so they help people so they have a base when they get out. It’s going to be amazing. I can see the opiate crisis shrinking. We are going to tackle it head on the same way it happened where it got big so fast.

    People relate to their own age group and their own addiction. For me, I had my friend come to me, I had been a cocaine addict for 20 years, then a crack addict for 9, but my friend came to me one month before I quit and for three years he had been clean and I said, Dick what are you doing here? He had found Jesus, he had gotten saved and I said as long as your here I asked, is it boring? He said no man it isn’t boring. I had all these questions that only he could answer.

    A Match Will Call Up Stories of Hope

    A 20-year-old opiate addict might not be able to relate to a 50-year-old meth addict. It’s like a match and when you get a match you see all these stories of hope. It’s going to be so amazing.

    At MyPillow I take addicts who have gotten help and give them second chances. Even like the Salvation Army, which is an amazing treatment center but nobody knows about them, so people that come out of there employers will grab them because they know they are amazing people. Addicts are amazing people, they are just hiding pain. I hope my story will give them hope. I have a book coming out that is going to offer hope. People need hope nowadays.

    MyPillow is a Platform for Helping People

    I would get these dreams and I used to always tell people, even my drug dealers, that I would come back someday and MyPillow was going to be a platform for helping people. The drug dealers did an intervention on me after I’d been up for 14 days. They wouldn’t sell me any drugs and I couldn’t get them on the street. I came upstairs at three in the morning and he took a picture and said you are going to need this for your book.

    You’ve been telling us for years that you are going to come back and help us, help the inner cities, and help us with our addiction and we are not going to let you die on us. I’d always tell them that MyPillow was a platform for God enabling us to help people and get that story of hope out there.

  • Apple Search Advertising: Their Next Multi-Billion Dollar Business?

    Apple Search Advertising: Their Next Multi-Billion Dollar Business?

    Senior Analyst at Berstein, Toni Sacconaghi, released a note today predicting that Apple’s advertising business will be worth billions by 2020. Similar to Amazon, Apple is incrementally focusing on expanding adverting opportunities, especially within the App Store.

    Toni Sacconaghi, Analyst at Bernstein, recently predicted that Apple would increasingly focus on and expand its advertising business:

    Obviously, advertising is a very attractive business because it has 80 percent gross margins. If you think about Amazon, the conversation around Amazon has increasingly moved towards advertising which is now a four to five billion dollar business, very high margins. That’s all just happened in the last two years and now we’re starting to see Apple do very analogous things to what Amazon does.

    Apple’s Ad Business is at $1 Billion Today With Big Potential

    Apple’s principal advertising foray today is in the App Store when you search for an app, ads pop up based on what you search for. This is very analogous to what Amazon is doing with Amazon sponsored product ads where an ad will pop up when you search for an item. We think this business today is maybe a $500 million to $1 billion dollars, but it’s only in 13 countries.

    Apple Ads Are Not in China Yet

    They’ve just actually rolled it out to six more,  that’s including six recently rolled out to. It’s not in China yet. We’re not seeing very high ad load, so you only get one ad when you do a search, whereas on Google or Amazon you might get four or five. The potential for this business to really inflect is significant and again it’s a very high margin business.

    Apple Has Big Potential for Increased Ad Load

    If you go to Amazon or Google you literally have to scroll down an entire page before you get non-advertised based hits and Apple today is only one, so it’s certainly possible that you could do more ads. Moreover, what Apple doesn’t do is once you’ve once you’ve done your search and you go to the next page there’s no advertising and that also occurs at Amazon and Google.

    There certainly may not be the potential for the same ad load going forward but Apple’s is so low relative to what we’re seeing elsewhere that we think there’s a potential for increased ad load.

    Apple’s Privacy Stance is a Limitation in Its Efforts to Advertise

    I think Apple’s privacy stance has really been a limitation in its efforts to advertise. Obviously, targeted advertising is worth much much more than general advertising, so Apple will continue to try and do both while preserving privacy. The ads are really based on very limited data. They’re based on whether you’re on an iPhone or an iPad, they’re based on your geographic location, age, and gender, and that’s it.

  • Heathrow Airport: How We Achieved a 20% Email Open Rate and 25% Click Through via Adobe

    Heathrow Airport: How We Achieved a 20% Email Open Rate and 25% Click Through via Adobe

    Analytics and Optimization Lead at Heathrow Airport, Stuart Irvine, says that email is still the key driver for them in marketing and personalizing the customer experience. Irvine said that Heathrow sends over 6 million emails monthly and that working with Adobe Campain has enabled them to move their opening rates to over 20 percent with 25 percent click-through.

    Stuart Irvine, Analytics and Optimization Lead at Heathrow Airport, recently talked about their use of Adobe products and services and how they have driven their evolution in digital marketing:

    Engaging 80 Percent of Our Customers Digitally

    We have 78 million customers a year and we are targeted with engaging 80 percent of our customers digitally. Certainly, we need to raise pre-awareness of our products and services before someone arrives at the airport.

    We have strong commercial targets that we need to hit and the Adobe Experience Cloud allows us to get from acquisition through to activity to after the trip activity. This allows us to tailor messages as someone moves through the airport experience to make sure that we deliver relevant push messages or relevant content throughout their journey.

    Email is Still the Key Driver for Us

    We work a lot with geolocation where we have over 11,000 beacons around the airport. Tools like Adobe Campaign allow us to move through that journey and keep that contact regular. We implemented Adobe Campaign three years ago with integration partner Acxiom, a long-term data partner. Adobe Campaign, as a truly omnichannel tool, has allowed us to really ramp up activity across channels.

    Certainly, email is still the key driver for us. We send over 6 million emails every month and Adobe Campaign has allowed us to personalize a lot more emails and make sure we get the right offers to the customers. We’ve worked with Adobe Analytics for 8 years and we now capture all of our online data. That’s all passed to Adobe Audience Manager which allows us to drive personalization at scale and deliver relevant and contextual experiences.

    Adobe Professional Services Has Been a Key Advantage

    I think the Adobe DAM, obviously with the integrations with Creative Cloud, can offer us huge process improvements. Working with Adobe professional services has actually been one of the key advantages for us. They have the knowledge to make the best value of the integrations between all of the solutions to really deliver experiences at scale we need to have automated processes.

    Moving More Towards Personalization

    We have a lot of faith in the Adobe Sensei platform and the machine learning there. We’re just opening up our homepage to automated personalization to try and bring through some subcategories of products that we’ll get a much better cut through with our customers. Now we’re moving more and more towards personalization, recommendations being the key focus areas for target.

    Adobe Audience Manager has been a key driver behind that. It is really a game changer for Heathrow Airport given our investment in the rest of our tech stack. Audience Manager really brings that all together and allows us to deliver an omnichannel experience.

    Open Rates Are Now Above 20 Percent

    We’ve seen open rates go from the low teens to above 20 percent, some great results there. We have over 25 percent click-through rates on some of our emails, which is a fantastic number to achieve. We’ve been able to increase average retail spend per passenger from £5 ($6.48) to £8 ($10.38). With our rewards customers, we see that they travel at least five times a year they have an average spend of £140 ($182) per visit. Adobe Campaign has been key to building that relationship.

    Our journey with Adobe has been a great experience. We’ve moved through from basically analytics eight years ago, but actually, the development of Adobe’s roadmap has continually evolved and that has driven our evolution in digital marketing as well.

  • Hilton CEO: We’re Not Gonna Have Robots Cleaning Rooms Anytime Soon

    Hilton CEO: We’re Not Gonna Have Robots Cleaning Rooms Anytime Soon

    Hilton is the most iconic hotel brand in the world, owning or managing over 5,400 hotels with over 880,000 rooms in 106 countries. Hilton is also the world leader in hotel innovation and technology launching the Connected Room and the Digital Key and even experimenting with the use of robots.

    Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO, Hilton & Chairman, recently discusses Hilton’s technological innovation and it’s innovating and pioneering spirit at the Africa Hotel Investment Forum:

    We Invented the Airport Hotel

    We invented the airport hotel. We all laugh but somebody did it first. Somebody figured out maybe you could put a hotel near an airport for those that get stranded, etc. So we were the first to do it at San Francisco Airport a long long time ago, way before my time.

    We’ve had both a pioneering spirit and an innovative spirit and that spirit is alive and well inside the company with our product, with our service, food and beverage, and with loyalty. We are trying to figure out how do you not have loyalty just be about points and creating real experiences are things that differentiate us where the customers just can’t get from anybody else or get on their own.

    We’re Not Gonna Have Robots Cleaning Rooms Anytime Soon

    And then technology. There is a huge element of technological innovation that’s really important. It’s not to get the people out of the hotels. A core element of what we are and what we stand for at Hilton and I think as an industry is about being a business of people serving people. That’s never gonna change.

    We’re not gonna have robots cleaning rooms or doing any of those tasks anytime soon. I’m not saying it won’t happen someday, but I doubt it in my lifetime. But there are a bunch of things and we’re doing them that is more mechanical and that the machines can do better than humans. Importantly, it can free up humans to think about how they can have a more direct relationship with a customer and how they can personalize the experience with the customer.

    Digital Check-In, Digital Room Selection, Digital Key

    I’ll give you some examples of things that we’re doing, a couple of big ones. Digital Check-in, Digital Room selection, and Digital Key. Not everybody wants to do that in every market in the world but a lot of people do and the bulk of our customers, when you get down to it, our road warriors. They come in like I did last night. You’re tired and it’s nice to get an email coming in from the airport, pick your room, here’s your key, and you don’t have to do anything.

    The bulk of travelers really want that. It means that in the end you probably need fewer people at the front desk if that really gets adopted at a mass scale, which I certainly hope it does, but that means you can have people instead of behind a desk, they can be out in the lobby, they can be out figuring out what they need to do to curate and personalize the experience.

    The Connected Room

    Another example is the connected room, which is not here on this continent yet (Africa) but will be coming soon, it’s not substituting for people but the reality is we all have content with us. We have our Netflix account or our Spotify or whatever kind of music. We all have these things now we can carry around in our device. We all have different needs in terms of temperatures and rooms and what we want from in audio-visual and what pillows we want, how we want to interact and order room service and all these things.

    What we’ve developed is proprietary technology that allows you to control your whole experience when you’re in your room so that it’s much more personalized. It’s not taking away, it’s not robots doing everything, it’s machines creating a more personalized experience that give you more the comforts of home.

    The one thing we all know as a road warrior myself, boy it’s nice when you go somewhere just to have some of the comforts of home. Imagine walking into a room and your accounts are all loaded up, all of your content, audio-visual, what temperature you want the room, level of lighting, all of those things are preloaded. Your pictures of your loved ones or your dog are rotating on the TV.

    We can do all that before you get there because once you’re in the building and you’ve checked in with Digital Key we know you’re in the building and we can activate all that stuff.

    Personalizing the Experience with Technology and Cloud Computing

    That’s not really taking the human element out of it. It’s just personalizing the experience in ways that we can do very inexpensively with modern technology and cloud computing and we can do very consistently.

    It’s things like that, not put the robots in charge but things that will take friction out of the experience and add a little bit more delight to the experience, create a little bit more of the comforts of home for those that are not at home and that have some level of stress or strain typically associated with their travel.

  • The Muse Founder Kathryn Minshew on the Importance of Trusting Your Instincts

    The Muse Founder Kathryn Minshew on the Importance of Trusting Your Instincts

    Kathryn Minshew, Founder & CEO of The Muse recently talked about the importance of making the important ‘irreversable’ decisions for her startup company. The Muse is a massively successful resource for people to craft and find fulfilling careers with over 50 million users.

    Although It’s not a job board you can find jobs on The Muse. Employers like to use The Muse to attract talent by telling a more authentic and compelling employer story.

    The Muse Founder and CEO Kathryn Minshew discussed the challenges of making decisions in a recent interview:

    I Wish I Would Have Learned to Trust My Instincts Earlier

    I wish I would have learned to trust my instincts. I started The Muse when I was 25, seven years ago. Because I was so young and was conscious of my inexperience I sometimes let other people overly influence the decisions that I made because it felt like I was so new to starting a business.

    Looking back, my instincts actually served me pretty well. Sometimes I trusted them and it was absolutely the right decision and there were other times I overruled them and went against my better judgment and I regretted it.

    As CEO You Bear Ultimate Responsibility for Success or Failure

    When you are a leader, particularly when you are the CEO of a startup company, at the end of the day everything that goes wrong or doesn’t work out you bear the ultimate responsibility for success or failure. When something happens that is a failure and you knew better, you overruled your own instincts or you let someone else make a decision that you really felt deep in your gut probably should have gone differently, I think those are the hardest mistakes to live with.

    I would rather trust my instincts and make the calls and deal with the results good and bad.

    Divide Decisions Into Two Categories

    Getting better at making decisions, especially small decisions is something I am absolutely working on right now. As you build a company, especially if you are trying to do something that no one has ever done before, you are solving countless problems and making countless decisions and that can be exhausting.

    I’ve tried to get better at dividing decisions into two categories, first, decisions that are reversible. These decisions I try to make quick and often try to delegate. You can get bogged down as a leader in overanalyzing these decisions, which I have definitely been guilty of. I’m working to just insure; how big is this decision, what are the impacts of getting it wrong, can we change our minds? If the answer to those is a green light I try and make it quick and move on.

    The other types of decisions are the bigger thornier decisions. It depends; is this a guiding light or principals decision or is this a structural or tactics decision?

    A Decision Making Metaphor I’ve Been Thinking About

    Here is a metaphor I’ve been thinking of. In the early days of starting a business, you are almost an explorer, so think sort of Louis and Clark, you are charting the wilderness and you have an idea. You have a small team, but ultimately you are deciding where to go. At some point, you find your market fit, your sweet spot and then you start building a town.

    You can be an explorer with great instincts with some level of training, or very little training in some instances, but when building a town you may want to actually bring in plumbers, electricians, people that have deep technical expertise. For things like that, I would empower those people, let them make decisions, and really lean into their skill sets because you hired them for a reason.

    You Can’t Delegate the Big Picture Direction Decisions

    When it comes to principals, the core ethics, the values, the big picture direction questions that’s where you can’t delegate because those are the most weighty and also the ones hardest to undo. People talk a lot about building culture, but changing culture is very hard. I think understanding where decisions fall and how reversible it is is a really important tactic for deciding how to delegate or when you need to just make a decision.

  • Uber is Planning to Start an On-Demand Staffing Agency for Businesses

    Uber is Planning to Start an On-Demand Staffing Agency for Businesses

    Uber is preparing to launch a new on-demand staffing business ahead of its first initial public offering. Called Uber Works, the new business could show prospective investors that the company can be a strong and lucrative platform for on-demand services.

    Uber is banking on the fact that their “on-demand” transportation model was a huge success. The company is also betting that its massive database of contractors can be utilized to serve as temporary staff, like security personnel, waiters, or cooks, for corporate functions and various events.

    While Uber Works is targeting people who are not Uber drivers, there’s no denying that the program could also help the company retain its drivers, or “partners,” by providing them with an alternative means of making money.

    Some of the ride-hailing company’s drivers are already moonlighting at Uber Eats, the company’s food delivery platform. Aside from the additional income, opting for a staffing job can also break the monotony of driving the whole day.

    Sources have reported that the Uber Works project had an initial trial run in Los Angeles before being developed further in Chicago.

    There’s no word yet on when Uber Works would be formally launched. However, the company is said to have already started its recruitment drive. Job ads stating that a Chicago-based special projects team is looking for applicants that have a “strong interest in the on-demand labor space” have already been posted.

    Uber Works will reportedly operate in the same vein as Freight and Uber Eats. The former connects shippers with the appropriate truckers. The latest “internal start-up” will fall under the office of Rachel Holt, the present head of Uber’s “new modalities” department. Holt’s division is in charge of the company’s multi-modal transportation drive. Aside from ride-sharing, the department is also expanding into scooters and bike sharing.

    On-demand staffing is said to be among the numerous initiatives Holt’s division is studying. However, there’s no guarantee that Uber Works or any of these other projects will become the main business line.

    [Featured image via YouTube]

  • Analyst: Services is the Linchpin For Apple to Reach a $1.5 Trillion Valuation

    Analyst: Services is the Linchpin For Apple to Reach a $1.5 Trillion Valuation

    The key to Apple’s success is to execute on China, execute on the iPhone and to continue to grow its services business according to Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush. Ives believes that the Apple services business when you look at the sum of its parts is undervalued and should add an additional half a billion dollars to Apple’s valuation over time.

    Dan Ives, Managing Director and Equity Analyst covering the Technology sector at Wedbush, talked about why they believe services growth at Apple will make the company worth $1.5 trillion:

    Services is the Linchpin For Apple

    In our opinion services is the linchpin. When you look at it from a sum of the parts, services, we think that business alone is about half a trillion, call it $450 billion dollars. That’s really what the street now is starting to reanalyze that and the multiple continues to expand. In our opinion, the iPhone product cycle continues to be there.

    It’s really about can they hit $50 billion (from services) in the next year and a half from a revenue perspective? With the sum of the parts, they’re able to do that and then you can start to justify that services business. When you add up the sum of the parts, the core iPhone business is worth about a trillion and then half a billion for the service.

    China is the Fuel in the Engine

    China is the fuel in the engine. Fundamentally, we don’t get to a trillion and a half (valuation) or even a stock that goes higher here if China is not a significant growth catalyst. We see about 60 or 70 million iPhones coming up for an upgrade cycle in China and we believe about 50 to 60 percent of those do get upgraded.

    I think without the services they’re a teenager in terms of where they’re gonna trade. I think the services business is how they start to get that re-rating from 20-22 times earning. That’s why right now for Cook and company it’s really about not making a bad strategic move on the content side or MNA. It’s really just executing on China, execute on the iPhone strategy, and services, that’s front and center.

    China is Also a Potential Pitfall

    A potential pitfall is China, just given what we’re seeing in terms with trade and tariffs. Can there be a supply chain disruption and really specifically, can consumers start to digest that higher price point with the lower competition?

  • Bizzabo Wants to be the Salesforce of Events

    Bizzabo Wants to be the Salesforce of Events

    Putting on an event, marketing an event and more importantly, measuring the impact of your event has never been easy. Enter Bizzabo, a company that is working to become the Salesforce of Events.

    Recently, Tom Shelly, Product Marketing Director at Bizzabo, discussed how their cloud-based solution is disrupting the event industry:

    Bizzabo Event Cloud Empowers the Marketer

    Bizzabo is a cloud-based service, the same as Salesforce which invented the Sales Cloud and then we had Marketo that invented the Marketing Cloud, we came and said there needs to be an Events Cloud. Our audience is the event marketer and essentially we’re empowering that marketer to create events that are actually rewarding and impactful for the audiences.

    Bizzabo is an all-in-one platform that they use in order to manage the event, in order to promote the event, and in order to execute it. But the secret sauce and the wisdom behind the platform is the fact that it allows the marketer to measure the impact of the events and that’s something that sounds standard, but no one can actually measure.

    Before Bizzabo Measuring Event Success Was Impossible

    We know that 24 percent of the marketing budget is invested in events, but they can’t measure it. They literally cannot tell if the event was successful. Were they able to retain customers, acquire customers, and was it because of that event? The platform provides them with a lot of analytics and statistics and insights and recommendations to become better at what they’re doing and grow their business through events that they’re hosting.

    Bizzabo Software Using Artificial Intelligence

    We’re providing them those recommendations and we’re at the point right now of incorporating AI and machine learning and the best technologies out there to provide all the knowledge that they need automatically so that they don’t need to do much.

    It’s already a very profitable engine for many companies all over the world. We have HubSpot as a customer and WeWork and many others.

  • Drive.AI Launches Free Self-Driving Car Service in Arlington, Texas

    Drive.AI Launches Free Self-Driving Car Service in Arlington, Texas

    Drive.AI has launched a free self-driving car service in Arlington, Texas. “In Arlington, we are launching three different services,” said Drive.AI CEO Bijit Halde. “One for the game day, one for lunchtime service, and one that connects the Convention Center to Texas Live, the entertainment part of the city.”

    “Today, we started with three cars with the potential to expand as the need of the community grows,” noted Halde.

    Halde says that “they will be the same type of cars we had in Frisco, Texas, part of the Dallas-Fort Worth area.” He noted that it’s just a beginning and that the small size of the launch is only one way of looking at it. “We want to be very careful and deliberate because safety is of utmost concern. Also, user acceptability is a core concern. We start small and grow fast.”

    Riders will pay nothing Halde says and anyone in that area can access this service. Halde added, “In Frisco, we only had a mobile app. In Arlington, we have a mobile app and walk up kiosks where you can type in your name and phone number to get picked up.”

    Halde explained that the company feels there are three factors to success with launching a self-driving ride-hailing service. One, can we safely deploy? But driving is not just one problem. The other factors are driving in the city and driving on the freeways. Drive.AI considers those as two distinct problems.

    “We want to make sure that we take a small problem and solve it and then grow from there,” said Halde. “We don’t want to push the technology when the people aren’t ready.”

  • Christie’s Says AI Art is Not a Masterpiece, But Good Enough for $10K

    Christie’s Says AI Art is Not a Masterpiece, But Good Enough for $10K

    Christie’s announced that it is going to auction for the first time art that has been generated via an artificial intelligence algorithm. The art was created by Obvious, a Paris-based collective consisting of Hugo Caselles-Dupré, Pierre Fautrel, and Gauthier Vernier using AI software.

    Richard Lloyd, Christie’s International head of Prints & Multiples discussed AI art in an interview on CBS:

    AI Art Used Software Called the GAN Algorithm

    Obvious used a nifty piece of software called the GAN algorithm. What they did is uploaded thousands of images to a computer and that point it actually splits itself in two. One half is called the Generator and that analyzes those thousands of portraits and learns what a portrait is. It sort of parses through all those and then thinks now I am going to start creating my own versions of those.

    The second half of the computer, the Discriminator, tries to spot that. Everytime the title is run, if the Discriminator is able to say that a portrait is created by a computer the Generator runs it again. The cycle finishes when the Discriminator says I give up, I can’t tell the difference between the computer generated version and the human-generated version and that’s what pops out.

    AI Art to Sell for $10K

    We’ve estimated that it will sell for $7,000 to $10,000. We put a lot of thought into the estimate because if we put a huge amount people would say what are you basing that valuation on because this is the first.

    But also we thought that it was the right sweet spot where people would respect it as a work of art because the creators certainly think of it as that.

    Who is the Creator of AI Art?

    Who created the art? Is it the person who wrote the algorithm? Is it a combination of the artwork that was uploaded? Is it the people that tweaked the software? This is why this is inspiring and interesting because we’ve never really had to ask those questions before.

    I remember reading years ago that when TV news started, print journalists thought well that’s it, who’s going to read a newspaper? Everybody is just going to watch it. But in fact, both exist side by side. So I think that in the future in five to fifteen years time there will be parallel tracks. There will be human art and artificial intelligence art.

    AI Human Hybrid Art is the Future

    There will also be a hybrid which I think is coming down the pike in the near future. Artists have always been great early adopters. Warhol adapted screen printing which came from commercial packaging.

    Photographers took the camera and thought we can do weird and wonderful things with this. I think human artists will be working side by side with this algorithm to create hybrid art. It’s just the beginning and is so fascinating in what is going to be created.

    Just Don’t Call AI Art a Masterpiece

    I’ve done a lot of research into AI art and there is something about using human-centric words like masterpiece. You just kind of stop short. I think a great work of art is a link to another person. You think of Vango and what he was going through to create that. But this is an algorithm so…

  • Domino’s CEO Talks Tech – Watch Autonomous Car Deliver Pizza

    Domino’s CEO Talks Tech – Watch Autonomous Car Deliver Pizza

    Domino’s Pizza continues to implement innovative technology to maintain it’s competitive edge in the pizza business. Domino’s ran ads over the summer promoting Hotspots where you could have pizza delivered to over 150,000 locations.

    The company has also been on the cutting edge of technology in its use of autonomous vehicles that are actually delivering pizza in Las Vegas. You can watch a video from a customer of a Domino’s driverless car delivering a pizza below. Domino’s is also testing AI natural voice systems in some of its corporate stores and just recently rolled out a voice inventory app.

    Ritch Allison, CEO of Domino’s, recently discussed their strategy of innovation and technology with CNBC’s Jim Cramer:

    Pizza is a really fragmented category. We’re the market share leader in pizza but we still only sell about one out of every six pizzas in the US. We’re staying focused on our strategy, and our execution and not really on the short-term up and downs of any one particular competitor (such as Papa John’s). If we stay focused on the things that we’ve been doing then we’re going to continue to take share from competitors small and large across the industry.

    The Hotspot ads we ran this summer were terrific. It’s just another great way that we’re engaging our customers. A lot of restaurant players and a lot of players in pizza our constant members in the product of the month club and we got out of that club a long time ago and started focusing on things that were interesting and innovative that we could do to engage our customers.

    Hotspots is another one of those because it shows our customers we’re so crazy about pizza that we’re going to take their pizza to them any time, any place, they want to get it.

    We’re working on a lot of things, autonomous vehicles are certainly one thing that we’ve been working on. We’ve talked about DOM, our artificial intelligence natural voice system. We’re still piloting that in some of our corporate stores. It’s learning, it’s growing, it’s getting better.

    We just recently rolled out within our stores a voice inventory app that our team members can use for one of the most unpleasant tasks they have which are at the end of a shift they’ve got to go count the food that we have in the walk-in cooler and this makes that job easier and faster for them well.

  • Pinterest’s Latest ‘Product Pin’ Feature Gives Sellers 40% More Clicks

    Pinterest’s Latest ‘Product Pin’ Feature Gives Sellers 40% More Clicks

    Pinterest is doing everything it can to make shopping even better for its users. The visual sharing platform recently introduced Product Pins, Shopping Recommendations, and a new shortcut. These new features aim to provide its 250 million active Pinners with a more intuitive and streamlined shopping experience.

    The first of these features is the Shopping Recommendations area in the women’s fashion and home décor categories. Pinners who view a pin in these groupings will see a new section showing “products like this.” The company states the recommended pins are visually similar to the items the customer is interested in. Each of these recommended pins will be called Product Pins.

    An enhanced version of the Buyable Pins, the Product Pin shows users the item’s current price and stock availability. The update is also designed to keep the users inside the platform. A lot of Pinners have expressed their frustration of going to an item’s product page only to find out that it’s out of stock. Product Pins will do away with that frustration. Pinners who tap on the pin will see a shopping tag icon. Hitting that tag will automatically send the user to the retailer’s checkout page. They then simply add the item to the card and finish the purchase. Less clicks, less frustration, more sales.

    Pinterest is reportedly phasing out its Buyer Pin program in favor of these new features. According to Tim Weingarten, Pinterest’s head of shopping product, not only are Product Pins “more personable,” but consumers also prefer to purchase pinned products directly from the merchant’s website.

    The company is also incorporating a shortcut that will make browsing Product Pins even faster. Users simply tap and hold on a pin to start a shortcut reel. It sends consumers to a page where they can find the relevant information about the item, along with other related products. The reel also includes a shopping tag shortcuts as well as save and send shortcuts.

    Pinterest is building themselves up as the consumer’s personal stylist. Weingarten explained in a blog post that their vision is to give users who see something they like on the platform the capability to buy it or something similar to it. It’s why the upgraded Pinterest “can give you recommendations for products based on your unique taste and what’s trending, and show you a range of visual ideas.”

    The company has commenced testing these new features last quarter, and the clicks on retail products have reportedly increased by as much as 40 percent. This will certainly help Pinterest’s goal of becoming a more “shoppable” platform.

    Pinners around the world can now enjoy Product Pins while Shopping Recommendations are currently limited to the U.S. However, it’s expected to roll out globally soon. The shopping shortcut is now available via an iOS app update but Android users will have to wait for a while.

    [Featured image via Pexels]

  • Why Would I Want My Underpants Connected to the Internet?

    Why Would I Want My Underpants Connected to the Internet?

    There was a session at the recent GeekWire Summit on how the IoT explosion will impact retail stores where underpants were discussed. It’s humous but very illustrative of how every item in every store, electronic or not, will be tracked in order to provide personalized shopping experiences and to bring massive efficiencies to the supply chain.

    Below is a conversation with Hointer CEO Nadia Shouraboura and Impinj CEO Chris Diorio on the importance of all items, even underpants, being eventually connected to the internet:

    Hointer CEO Nadia Shouraboura – What is the Internet of Things?

    The Internet of Things is just one part of the puzzle and many things need to come together to make this puzzle happen. For example, in the retail space, product is very important, price is very important, but experience is very important too, so IOT is just one part of that puzzle.

    Impinj CEO Chris Diorio – Connect Every Item in the World

    Impinj builds products around a certain type of RFID technology called Rain for radio identification. Our vision is to connect every item in your everyday world to the Internet, everything. Every apparel item, every food item, just literally have connectivity for every item in the world. Impinj has connected more than 25 billion items to date and more than seven billion last year alone.

    We connect those items wirelessly and what we’re focused on delivering is for each item is its unique identity, its location, and its authenticity, and in so doing extending the reach of the Internet to everybody and to everyday items. For us, the Internet of Things truly means things, not just connectivity for powered electronic devices, but for everything, and in so doing bring benefits to industries and consumers.

    Impinj CEO Chris Diorio –   Connecting Underpants?

    When you go into the store and you want to find the ones that you want to buy in the right size and the right type if you’re like me you know exactly what you want to buy and when you go in the store you want it to be there. If it’s not there because the supply chain inefficiencies you’re probably not going to buy anything.

    Hointer CEO Nadia Shouraboura – IoT and Underpants

    The importance of IoT to underpants is to measure results and what IoT delivers in terms of results. One thing which is important when you think about Underpants is sex. To me, sex is defined by two metrics which is quantity and quality. What I discovered personally is, for example, IoT lights, beautiful lights.

    The experience is you come in and you’re tired and you don’t want to think about sex and suddenly the whole room turns to your mood in soft blue and it genuinely works. If you measure IoT devices and lights and its correlation with quantity and quality of sex in underpants there is a very strong correlation. That’s an example of the impact of IoT to your underpants.

    Impinj CEO Chris Diorio – Even Your Underpants

    There’s a retailer that we work within France that if you are a consumer and you walk into the store, there’s a kiosk you basically where you decide what you want and when you click the item within 90 seconds the item comes down in a little tube like they used to have in the banks. A little tube comes down with your little capsule with exactly what you want to buy. Just check it out right there just walk out of the store, even if it’s your underpants.

  • Thinking About Using AI to Recruit New Staff? Amazon’s Failed Experiment Might Have You Thinking Twice

    Thinking About Using AI to Recruit New Staff? Amazon’s Failed Experiment Might Have You Thinking Twice

    Companies that are planning to use artificial intelligence for recruitment should think twice before doing that. A new report revealed that Amazon’s AI machine learned gender bias and weeded out women as potential job candidates. The machine even downgraded applicants based on the school they attended.

    A growing number of employers are using AI to boost the efficiency of their hiring process. The machine can be utilized to evaluate resumes, narrow down a list of applicants, and recommend candidates for the right post within a company. It can then pass on its findings to its live counterpart for human assessment. While AI is an effective tool for screening resumes, it has been shown to develop bias, as proven by Amazon’s experiment.

    Reuters reported that the retail giant spent several years developing an AI that would vet job applicants. The machine was trained to look at the resumes that the company received for the past ten years. But as most of these applications were from male applicants, the patterns the AI identified were strongly oriented to that sex. In short, Amazon’s AI learned gender bias.

    For instance, the AI developed a preference for terms like “captured” or “executed,” which were words commonly used by male engineers. The machine also began to penalize applications that included the word “women” or “women’s.” So describing yourself as the head of the “women’s physics club” was a strike against you.

    A source familiar with Amazon’s AI program also admitted that the machine even downgraded applicants who graduated from two all-women’s universities. The names of the universities were not specified in the report.

    The bias shown by the AI’s algorithm became noticeable a year after the project started, and Amazon admittedly tried to correct its AI. The company’s engineers initially edited the system to make it neutral to these specific words. However, there was no way of proving that the machine would not learn another way to sort candidates in a discriminatory manner.

    The project was eventually shelved in 2017 because company executives lost confidence in it. The AI also reportedly failed at providing choices for strong and effective job candidates.

    Fortunately for Amazon, the AI hiring experiment was just a trial run. The machine was never utilized by a larger group and was never used as the main recruiting agent. Nevertheless, the possibility is high that a qualified applicant was weeded out simply because she was a woman and did not think to use a masculine term like “capture.”

    [Featured image via Pexels]

  • NYU Stern Professor Scott Galloway: Amazon is a Monopoly that Should be Broken Up

    NYU Stern Professor Scott Galloway: Amazon is a Monopoly that Should be Broken Up

    NYU Stern Professor Scott Galloway says that Amazon is a monopoly that should be broken up. “When one company can take down the price of any other consumer company, almost by a third, just with press releases, I would argue that the markets are no longer competitive. The key to this great system we call capitalism is that no one player has too much power,” stated Stern.

    Scott Gallowy, NYU Stern Professor, recommended that Amazon should be broken up in an interview on Fox Business:

    Jeff Bezos Lost the Value of Nordstrom Yesterday

    I believe that Amazon from an investors perspective is probably a buy. Essentially, you had a company whose valuation may have gotten a little bit over its skis. Rising interest rates, the threat of a slowdown, and also the specter of regulation took this stock down. I think Jeff Bezos actually lost the value of Nordstrom just personally yesterday, his net worth declined $9 billion. I would argue from a strictly economic, business, and shareholder standpoint, Amazon has never been stronger. Whenever they bump up against any big tech companies they’re winning.

    Amazon is Effectively a Monopoly

    My issue is that when you have one company that controls 50 percent of all ecommerce, that small companies never get out of the crib and large companies are prematurely euthanized, who tend to be better taxpayers and employers. While it’s great for shareholders to have shares in a company that is effectively a monopoly, in a growing economy I would argue that we have a proud history of moving in on companies in terms of antitrust regulation and we’re at that point in the economy with Amazon.

    Won’t the Markets Take Care of This?

    Walmart was hauled before Congress when they were at 11 percent of retail and Amazon was only at 6 percent. However, I think a more apt analogy would be railroads or Ma Bell or even Standard Oil, where we decided that effectively the markets were no longer competitive. You now have a company where if it just puts out a press release saying that it will address health care costs, and we don’t even know if that means they are giving employees gym memberships or that meant that they are starting an HMO, on opening bell the healthcare industry sheds $31 billion in value.

    Good for Shareholder, Good for the Company, Good For the Planet

    When one company can take down the price of any other consumer company, almost by a third, just with press releases, I would argue that the markets are no longer competitive. The key to this great system we call capitalism is that no one player has too much power. In addition, I think if you broke up Amazon shareholders might benefit. If you spun AWS, soon after the spin the two companies in aggregate might be worth more than the two companies combined. So good for the shareholders, good for the company, good for the planet.