SROYS

Maybe I am just being naive but to me it makes perfect business sense. The retailing industry players, it seems, have still not realized that one or a few very large companies can’t really provide an optimized shopping experience - at least not in the way we are expecting this business to be conducted. As more and more people want to be treated as “Humans” the solution we’ll have from the big players will always be a compromised one. We would all love it if things were better than what they already are.

Shopping is a very personal thing - I am very picky when I go in to buy things for my son - I would definitely like someone to go give me some personal attention. Right now where I live the idea of”customer satisfaction” hasn’t really peaked - people are still learning that “customers are kings and queens” but in more mature markets this is pretty much the norm - you do more business if you treat your customers well and go the extra mile to serve their needs.

The large and small, online and offline retailers should go into a search <-> publisher/retailer <-> consumer model that is usually followed on the internet for content consumption. The major brands will become the search, the little corner shops and retailers will become the publishers and the consumers will use a local inventory to find and choose the best places to shop (according to their needs) or get the stuff delivered. This would be the most efficient and the most profitable for all parties.

Let’s take a use case: I have a list of things to buy -

• Clothes for my son
• A gift for a visiting friend
• Some groceries

The three items have very different personalization needs. I would like to see and then do a try out for the clothes for my son. I want ideas for the gift - then I want to see it. For groceries I just have a list of items but I am open to getting some extra nick-nacks.

The way I do it now is I either order in the groceries on the phone or go pick it up (I don’t really want to do that) - I go in search for a nice gift to the malls - at the same place I check out the kid shops and get my son to try out some clothes. Simple but not efficient.

The way I see it happening in the future is I’ll use choose one shopping application (from one of the large retailers) on my desktop or mobile phone - preferable synced via the cloud. I add my items to buy as and when I think about them - then when I have time I sit down to do my search.

I see a listing of the local grocery store in the app who has all that I need - I check out some nick-nack options and I push the order to them - and since they are 5 minutes away - the order is delivered to me very quickly. My linked account is debited. Done.

Then I go on to search for the gift - I feed the data about who I am looking to buy for - the shopping app possibly is aware of the person’s profile (maybe even facebook/twitter feeds) so it checks what options are most suitable and gives me a list. I “like” a few items - the shopping app gives me options about shops where they are available (checking from inventory) nearest to me. I shortlist the stores and I move on to my next item in the list.

I then check some baby clothes - again mark the ones I like and then shortlist the stores for this item. Then I ask the shopping app to optimize my route - if there are 2 gift items I likes and 1 kids store I liked in one location - that gets more priority than if one gift store has 3 items I liked.

So now I know exactly what I want - I know exactly where to go and all the retailers have a made a profit - the big retailer search app, the local retailer.

This option will work beautifully because many times I don’t really want to spend my time to go out to look for some item - I don’t mind ordering it and waiting a couple of days for the delivery. But if the big/small retailer partnership existed this would become even faster.

There are many reasons why the large online retailers would want to do this:

1. It’s easier and cheaper to deliver if there are local retailers in your team. Both small retailers and large retailers do MORE business by optimizing inventory.
   
   
2. Even the online orders can be delivered much more quickly - the users are happier and spend time on more productive things.
3. The big retailers are not cutting out the local retailers but rather making them a part of the process - giving them accurate data about what they should stock and when - they know this from the search queries and if they had to send a user more distance than was necessary.
4. The big retailers are able to outsource the personalization factor by training their retailers.
5. Logistics and demand planning can be optimized to serve the users in the most effective way by forwarding order requisition to the retailer who has the “most” of the item and is nearest depending on whether the person wants to pick up the item or if it is to be delivered.

Thanks to @Leenarao for writing this article on retailing on techcrunch - I ran into it through @jackabraham ‘s comment on his twitter.

Update: Turns out milo.com is already doing something to this effect (sorry I just started writing after I read Leenarao’s article) through their milo fetch software here https://pointofsale.milo.com/ - no wonder they got acquired by ebay for $75 million. I haven’t checked out their shopping app (or if they have one) but if it does the kind of stuff described above it would be awesome.

I still think Amazon can do this better and should get behind the local retailers and make them part of their chain even if just in words “Amazon Enabled” and build their phone app to do the stuff making it really simple for people like us to shop.