Data In Omni-Channel Retailing Is About Art, Not Science

By Christopher Walton, Entrepreneur and former Vice President, Target Store of the Future

Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind remarked:

I told you once before that there were two times for making big money — one in the upbuilding of a country and the other in its destruction. Slow money on the upbuilding; fast money in the crack-up. Remember my words. Perhaps they may be of use to you some day.

While good old Rhett was really speaking about the Civil War, his advice still rings true today because a “crack-up” is exactly what we have in retail right now. We are in a period of incredible adaptation. The question is not what will happen to retail. The pie is the pie, so to speak. The far more important question is, how will the pie get carved up? Or said another way, which retailers that we know today will survive for the long term? What new players will emerge? And what technologies will play the largest roles in determining how the pie ultimately gets carved up?