Amazon started killing retail in 1999. This weekend they announced private label brands from food to diapers. Makes sense to me.
No matter what Amazon does, they will never kill all of retail. In fact, they are only helping with a the speed of reimagining.
For sure, Amazon is running on all cylinders. Especially the last 5 years:
Returns over the past year…$GPS: -52%$KSS: -51%$M: -51%$SPLS: -48%$BBBY: -38%$AMZN: +67%
— Charlie Bilello, CMT (@MktOutperform) May. 12 at 04:17 PM
This chart also blew my mind of the last 12 months…the pace of Amazon domination is accelerating (likely due to Amazon prime):
The Amazon Economy. $AMZN
— Charlie Bilello, CMT (@MktOutperform) May. 18 at 08:29 AM
But take a look at the charts of Autozone ($AZO) and Home Depot ($HD).
NOT…DEAD!
I won’t get into why they have not died because a lot of shortsellers have been buried along the way of these up and to the right charts.
Apple won’t easily be killed at retail either. I expect them to thrive.
Be on the lookout as well for ‘Digitally Native Vertical Brands‘ (DNVB’s) as Andy Dunn calls them. He is the founder of Bonobos, a clothing brand that started digitally and now has a retail footprint. I wear their golf pants and so does my 17 year old son. Almost an 8-80 phenomenon already!
Here (in this post) Andy categorizes the emerging list of DNVB’s.
To help EVERYONE be a DNVB we have Bitcoin, Square and my favorite ecommerce and payment brands Shopify ($SHOP) and Paypal ($PYPL) which I am long at the moment.
Our fund has made a bet on the future of retail and DNVB with an investment in Narvar, a company you won’t have heard of but is growing super fast and has venture capital from Accel.They make tools to help retailers champion their customers.
Ok Back to Amazon and them killing retail.
A great read on the subject was written in January 2014 by Jeff Jordan. Here it is.
This weekend Steven Sinofsky had an excellent piece that I will end this post with. It’s called ‘Disruption’s, Long, Slow, Complex Journey.’
I hope all this helps get you thinking more broadly about the death and birth of retail.
Disclosure – Long $amzn $aapl $shop $pypl