As the article accurately states today in retail as it relates to digital there is a mix of fear, no commerce strategy and a correct view of the future where there is no delineation between online and offline retail from small pockets inside the company.
Putting a little effort into digital strategy big things can happen in retail, the distribution potential is enormous, but it’s going to take a new line of thinking and that change may not be coming quickly enough for some.
Aileen Lee, founder of Cowboy Ventures and Partner at Kleiner Perkins, believes that retail will continue to be an industry where you are seeing large companies eat software.
“A lot of physical retailers saw soft foot traffic in their stores in Q3 and they are more nervous about how e-commerce is eating into their sales,” she explains. Companies like TJ Maxx, Urban Outfitters and others can easily make a $100 million to $400 million acquisition in the current market, she adds. In fact, earlier this year, Urban Outfitters reportedly did try to buy NastyGal, a fast-growing e-commerce site for young women.
“Lots of these retailers have no commerce strategy, but startups have the potential to expand consumer reach to a younger demographic,” says Lee.
David Blumenfeld, SVP of Westfield Labs, the innovation arm of shopping mall developer Westfield, tells us that the company is definitely evaluating potential acquisitions that they can bring into their Labs groups.
“While Westfield itself is not a tech company, we believe that there is not a delineation between online and offline shopping, and we have to be a part of that,” he says. “We believe tech is core to the future of how products are bought even in malls.”
He adds that with the company’s malls, they have the distribution (to potentially 1.1 billion people, he says), and they are actively looking for technologies they can integrate into their malls. via Techcrunch As Software Eats The World, Non-Tech Corporations Are Eating Startups