Whole Foods Raises Fees on Some Suppliers
Source: (Inc. Feb 9, 2018)

Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods last year made the grocer somewhat less expensive for many shoppers, particularly lovers of avocados and tilapia–but small businesses are starting to feel the pinch. Learn more

Procter & Gamble Focuses Digital & eComm Spend
Source: (Ad Age Feb 8, 2018)

Big traditional marketers have in recent years tried to prove or maintain their relevance by spending more on digital, Now P&G is moving away from programmatic and plowing more money into e-commerce platforms run by the likes of Amazon and Walmart. Learn more

Most Meaningful Agenda – POI Spring Annual Summit April 11-13, Chicago – Learn eComm, RGM, (including Amazon) from J&J Kellogg’s, PepsiCo, Mondelez, Del Monte, Wells Enterprises, Tyson, Walgreen’s, Colgate-Palmolive, Church & Dwight, etc.

For information, contact Mike Kantor at mkantor@p-o-i.org or (914) 319-7309

Register for this next world-class agenda,
Attendees already registered include:
Tillamook, Schwan’s, Eagle Family Foods, Morton Salt, ACH Foods, ECOS Brands, Keurig-Dr. Pepper, Parmalat, Diageo, Jack Links, Furlani Foods, Fererro, MTD Products, Nestle, Mondelez, Mrs. T’s, Wells Enterprises, Starbucks, Kimberly-Clark, Mars, Barilla, SCJ, VitaminShoppe, Organic Valley, Delicato Vinyards, Del Monte, Daisy Brand, CLIF Bar,Clorox, SCA, Pinnacle Foods, Hershey, Coca-Cola, Brookshire Grocery, Ahold, Pacific Foods, Marzetti, Johnsonville Sausage, Califia Farms, Ventura Foods, RXBAR, Tyson Foods, FLNA, Edgewell, Grupo Lala, Whirlpool, Dole Foods, Unilever, Tree Top Foods, Welch’s, Snyder’s-Lance, Farmer John, General Mills, Kraft-Heinz, Diageo, Pernnod-Ricard, Sargento, PepsiCo, Windsor Foods, Deoleo, L’Oreal, ACH Foods, Colgate-Palmolive, Walgreen’s, Hormel, Dean Foods, Constellation Brands, Blue Buffalo, Energizer, Borden Dairy, Bellisio Foods, Bimbo Bakeries, Sysco, Nestle, Kimberly Clark, Johnson & Johnson, Perfetti Van Melle, Kellogg’s, JM Smucker, Church & Dwight, Keurig Green Mountain, Musco Family Olive, ConAgra, Ainsworth Pet Nutrition, Rich Products, and many others. By now you should have received your invitation. If not, reach me today at mkantor@p-o-i.org

2018 Expected as Milestone Year for eCommerce
Source: (Chain Store Age Feb. 7, 2018)

U.S. e-commerce sales will increase nearly 16% in 2018, to reach $526.09 billion, representing 10% of total retail sales, according to a report by eMarketer. Total U.S. retail sales will grow 3.7% to reach nearly $5.3 trillion. Learn more

Presentations from the just concluded POI Fall Annual Summit are available to Attendees and POI Members now at http://bit.ly/Dallas17Presos 

Walmart Acquires a Virtual Reality Startup

Source: (Drugstore News Feb. 6, 2018)

Walmart has made a move to strengthen its commitment to virtual reality. The discounter’s innovation lab, Store No. 8, has acquired Spatialand, a small VR platform and content studio. The studio will be tasked with creating the foundation of Store No 8’s third portfolio company. Learn more

Coty Launches CoverGirl Try-On Mobile-Web Experience

Source: (WWD Feb. 6, 2018)

Jason Forbes, Chief Digital and Media Officer, Coty, said, “As a challenger in beauty, our goal is finding better ways to meet unmet shopper needs. Virtually trying on complete trending looks, without having to download an app or go to a store, are great examples of this. We’re excited to partner with Walmart on this initiative, giving online shoppers a specific and seamless path to purchase their favorite COVERGIRL beauty looks.”   Learn more

Amazon, Whole Foods launch 2-hour free delivery

Source: (FoodBizNews Feb. 8, 2018)

Since the WFM Acquisition, the company has introduced Amazon lockers in Whole Foods Market stores. Customers may have products shipped from Amazon.com to a local Whole Foods store for pickup, or consumers may send returns back to Amazon via the lockers. Learn more

Unilever oreSees Accelerated Sales Growth

Source: (CNBC Feb 1, 2018)

Unilever, which spent most of last year reviewing its business after rebuffing a $143 billion takeover bid in February – said underlying sales rose 4 percent.   Analysts on average were expecting 3.7 percent, according to a company-supplied consensus. Learn more

POI 2018 TPx and Retail Execution State of the Industry Report

New Findings: Cloud Hype versus Cloud Reality

 POI continues to believe that the cloud is the future of computing. It is just a matter of when it will happen. 5 years ago, CG companies were worried about security in the cloud. They have since gotten over that – and rightly so. But once they did, there was an initial rush to do things in the cloud. IT organizations embraced it and wanted to promulgate it as a strategy. However, in that rush there were many things that got left out in terms of functionality. For one thing, we saw vendors trying to get into the TPM space for anything from planning to post event analytics that just didn’t have industry expertise.

Several technology vendors rushed in and tried to sell solutions, but failed. It was even worse in Retail Execution, where the barriers to entry are relatively low. We have seen even more vendors try to enter that space. Some of these we followed for a time, but realized that they had no staying power. The sales cycles are too long and they didn’t get traction because they lacked product attributes and often didn’t have anybody with industry credibility.

At the same time, some vendors with all the right experience and credentials have launched cloud-based applications, but they often did so prematurely and lacked a critical mass of industry functionality. The result was that they lost some credibility and perhaps confused the market with their ‘cloud for cloud’s sake’ approach. Some found a bit of success by pitching joint development, but much of that was with IT folks and it never got traction with the business. The result has been that we are actually seeing decreased interest in the cloud.

First, let’s look at survey results for TPx (basically the entire stack) and then for TPO/advanced analytics in isolation, as it is much more on trend and usually represents a future purchase. The results are as follow: (see full report for chart)

It is interesting how ‘on-premises’ and ‘no preference’ account for all of the decline in private cloud. Similarly, cloud as a total entity declined by 4 PP, which is the amount of increase in mentions by on-premises. We don’t really understand the nuances between preferences of public versus private cloud except for who is managing the solution within a public cloud. It is really a matter of where a vendor chooses to host its solution(s). Ostensibly you would expect that the trend towards outsourcing more and more of IT would make sense and they would want to do it in a public cloud where they don’t have to mess with it. However, Microsoft has both private and public. Amazon has the ability to provision a private cloud within its public offering. But it doesn’t really matter because on-premises is still the big winner. And, this isn’t just a wish on the part of respondents, we have seen several large on-premises TPx deals in recent months. Ironically, they have been primarily with very large CG companies. Learn more, and access the full report at POI

Have a sensational week, including a Happy Valentine’s Day!

Michael Kantor, CEO and Founder

Promotion Optimization Institute (POI) mkantor@p-o-i.org