Memo: On J-Curves and Agglomeration

With the exception of a few larger volume sellers, Amazon is shifting away from the retailer model by limiting their wholesale partnerships to the most impactful partners. The rules of the consumer economy are changing faster than ever. Some of these changes have had dire consequences, especially for independent retailers and challenger brands. Thi... See more

The problem with JC Penney isn’t that the department store business is a bad business (you could argue that the online bookstore business for Amazon was also a bad business). The problem is that JC Penney doesn’t have a high density of people who are either deeply tenacious or deeply creative. The unknown unknowns at JC Penney are 1,000 times less ... See more

We are entering a new evolutionary stage of retail, in which big companies will get bigger, many mom-and-pop dreams will burst, chains will proliferate and flatten the idiosyncrasies of many neighborhoods, more economic activity will flow into e-commerce, and restaurants will undergo a transformation unlike anything the industry has experienced sin... See more