2017Issue6_Alabama_v9.indd

VIEWPOINT

T U RN , T U RN , T U RN

KEVIN COUPE FOUNDER, MORNINGNEWSBEAT.COM

“To every thing there is a season … a time to break down, and a time to build up…” - Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

Like Walmart and Google teaming up to battle with Amazon. These two behemoths struck a deal that will make Walmart products available to people using the Google Express shopping platform – the first time that Walmart has made its products available in the U.S. outside the walls of its own stores or beyond its own websites. At the same time, Google will enable Walmart to use its Google Home platform, which uses a voice-controlled speaker as a personal assistant, to place orders on Google Express for Walmart products. This is all an answer to how Amazon is expanding its ecosystem through its Echo/ Alexa platform, and the partnership reflects the fact that both companies see Amazon as a threat. As should every retailer out there. In my day job, as Content Guy for MorningNewsBeat, I got a number of emails after the closure of the Amazon-Whole Foods deal was announced, with a variety of people suggesting that it would have absolutely no impact on their companies. I hope they’re right. But they’re only going to be right if they get aggressive about competing with Amazon/Whole Foods, finding ways not just to blunt their

The thing is, there is no question in my mind that these are treacherous times to be a retailer. In my previous column for this magazine, “Something Went Bump,” I wrote about some of the potential implications of an Amazon acquisition of Whole Foods. Now, as I write this column, that deal has been signed, sealed and delivered, and Amazon already has begun the process of reinvention and reintegration, while trying to maintain Whole Foods’ cultural imperatives. It won’t be easy, and success is hardly a sure thing. But then again, Amazon CEO/ Founder Jeff Bezos once said that if you know what the outcome is going to be, it isn’t really a test. And Amazon has the notion of testing limits built into its DNA. But I don’t want to write about Amazon and Whole Foods this month. If you want to know what I think about how the partnership will play out, go back and read my last column. (At the risk of contorting myself while patting my own back, I think I got it right.) No, what I want to write about this time around is the other stuff…the challenges that now ought to seem self-evident to every other retailer in the space.

I was speaking at a company event the other day where the folks were justifiably proud of themselves. It was after the company’s 25th anniversary of being in business and there was a lot of back-slapping going on. I don’t blame them that. I believe in celebrating success. I’ve certainly done my share of back-patting in my office (though it requires me to be a bit of a contortionist since I work alone). Unfortunately, I had to deliver some bad news. Good is what you were yesterday. Your reputation with your customers is entirely in the past tense. Today and tomorrow and the day after that, you have to earn it all over again, and have to do so in a business climate that is far more volatile, with customers who are far more fickle, and with competition that is far more diverse and aggressive, than anything you’ve faced in the past quarter- century. (Sometimes I go to these events, and I feel like I’m Frederic March in “Death Takes A Holiday.”)

combined advantages but to build on their own strengths in new and even unexpected ways.

| ALABAMA GROCER 18