Day 15 Nat'l Emergency: Time for Humor and ...

Had enough depressing news? I’ll try not to inflict more on you today.

To help you cope, click on this article from the Harvard Business Review. It explains the emotion many of us are feeling is grief and provides ideas how to deal with it: https://hbr.org/2020/03/that-discomfort-youre-feeling-is-grief (my thanks to my sister, Lee, a retired psychological social worker and elementary school teacher in Los Angeles).

Deserving of Thanks: A former colleague at Lebhar-Friedman, Barbara Hochberg, posted this appropriate note the other day:

“After COVID-19 is over, I better NEVER hear anyone trash ‘low end’ workers again. Those people at the grocery store, the Dollar General workers, those fast food workers, the Walmart employees, those people you didn’t even think deserved to have a wage to survive on? They’re some of the ones currently carrying the country through this mess, making sure you and your families have food and essentials to survive on, risking their health to help yours. And most won’t even have the money to go to the doctor if they get sick. I better NEVER see someone be unappreciative or dismissive of them again!”

Amen!

I overheard my wife and one of her friends talking on the phone the other day. Both said they haven’t put makeup on in two weeks or performed other beauty regimens. Safe to say, if younger females are similarly beautified each day of home coronavirus containment we might not experience the population explosion we did after the two New York City blackouts years ago. Worth checking the level of baby deliveries next December and January. 

Read On?: One would think that given forced confinement one would finally have the time and inclination to read The New York Times from cover to cover, so to speak. One would think so, but one would be wrong. 

To begin with, I can’t think of a more depressing activity than reading and reading and reading story after story after story about the pandemic. Especially given the proliferation of media outlets available on the Web, one could spend every waking hour engrossed in despair. Read a few articles, but for the sake of your own sanity, limit what you read and view. Trust me, you will find out about truly important news, good or bad. 

Just Wondering: With all the extended handwashing we are doing these days, will we experience a water shortage in a few months? 

It is no secret that the availability and supply of potable water is considered by some global strategists to be the next trigger point for conflict between nations and states. Georgia and Florida have battled in court on water from a river, while Western states have long been at odds over proper use of the Colorado River. 

For the dog lovers among you, and even for those who love cats or other animals more, feast your eyes on this collage of pictures taken by UPS drivers: https://www.boredpanda.com/ups-drivers-meets-animals-dogs/.

If you’re a Broadway musical fan, here’s a medley of tunes adapted for the coronavirus (again courtesy of my sister): https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2Fn1OCZRann8w&data=02%7C01%7C%7C14e5c75372494ed6637308d7d0dc2923%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637207516301042184&sdata=aPipvS5oC7fg%2F%2F8qB%2Fxopw49tndOevak%2FMH8RcL0HIw%3D&reserved=0

So Sad: It is almost impossible to ignore our “wartime” president’s war on science and anyone who disputes his authority and expertise. In rejecting New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s plea for 30,000 ventilators for affected victims of COVID-19, Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity Thursday night, “I have a feeling that a lot of the numbers that are being said in some areas are just bigger than they’re going to be. I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators. You know, you go into major hospitals sometimes, they’ll have two ventilators. And now all of a sudden they’re saying can we order 30,000 ventilators?” (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-coronavirus-ventilators-new-york-state_n_5e7d651cc5b6256a7a27c911). 

Does Trump think it is a competition between states and governors to see who has the most coronavirus cases and deaths? 

Maybe this mock clip of Trump truly does capture the essence of the man (thanks to my high school classmate Mike Exelbert for forwarding it to me): 

IMG_4157.MOV 

Retailing in the Age of Amazon Will Not be Devoid of Human Contact

By now you probably heard or read about Amazon’s pending purchase of Whole Foods Markets, what business analysts are projecting as the tipping point in a retail revolution that may well transform consumer transactions into experiences almost devoid of human interaction. With your smart phone you will be able to circumvent dealing with store personnel, they say, resulting in massive layoffs of workers at the lowest rung of the labor force, many who are unskilled, or elderly, or handicapped, or immigrants with tenuous English language skills, or combinations of the above (https://nyti.ms/2sAPV2D).

Analysts point to the the example of Amazon Go, an experimental store for its Seattle employees. Customers scan their phones upon entering, sensors remotely monitor what they put into their shopping baskets, and exit without the need to stop at a checkout stand and interact with a cashier for their purchases to be charged to their accounts.  

It reminds me of a technology I witnessed back in 1990 at my first EuroShop exhibition of store equipment and technology in Dusseldorf, Germany. A shopping cart haphazardly loaded with products was wheeled through a box the size of a compact refrigerator. Presto, all the items were scanned and ready to be taken home by the customer. So here we are more than a quarter of a century later, nowhere near the promise of yesterday, much like the flying cars we expected to be riding had we believed the future as portrayed in color newspaper inserts of the 1950s and 1960s. Heck, we haven’t even been able to create the flying hover board Marty McFly rode in 1989’s Back to the Future Part II set in 2015. Our earthbound hover boards are fire hazards.

But I digress. The point is, despite Moore’s Law and its corollaries to the rapid adoption of technologies, we are decades away from widespread implementation of Amazon’s futurescan. For several reasons.

Not everyone who enters a store buys something. Not everyone wants their whereabouts and their identities known and cached in some unknown database à la Minority Report. Civil libertarians would have a field day if such technology becomes ubiquitous, implemented without the authorized consent of the public.

Perhaps most socially and culturally relevant, eliminating the human factor in retailing would exacerbate the bifurcation of society already underway. While smart phones are ubiquitous in most neighborhoods, checking accounts and credit/debit cards are not. 

Three times a week I drive into Manhattan along Fifth Avenue, from 142nd Street in Harlem to 98th Street, one of the tonier sections of New York. From 110 Street, where Central Park begins, to 98th Street, Fresh Direct trucks double park as drivers deliver groceries to the wealthy. Above Central Park, over nearly three years I have yet to see a Fresh Direct truck servicing the population.

When visiting a supermarket, I opt for self-scanning in Stop & Shop. Except, not all Stop & Shops in my sphere of buying offer self-scanning. Stores in less desirable neighborhoods do not. Hmmm. I don’t really need to wonder why.

At upscale stores, such as Trader Joe’s, where friendly, knowledgeable service, along with exclusive products, are differentiators, I cannot foresee management abandoning their unique service proposition. 

Stacy Torres, an assistant professor of sociology at the University at Albany, provides real-life examples of why robots replacing humans has its drawbacks as long as we remain social animals: https://nyti.ms/2tVmHbT

The most dynamic growth retailers are deep discounters in food and general merchandise. While Trader Joe’s concentrates on the upscale market, its sister company, Aldi, aims low. It is a German-based no-frills, generic low-priced grocer sweeping across our country. So is Lidl, another German discount grocer with aggressive U.S. expansion plans.

Dollar stores, among them Dollar General and Dollar Tree, though the former is not a true dollar store purveyor as its price points are not restricted to 100 pennies, are the growth vehicles of challenged America. They serve a class of customer that will always be handled by store personnel.

Just imagine going into a Home Depot or Lowe’s. Not that it’s easy to find someone to help you right now, but it is doubtful they will do away with sales floor assistance. Cashiers? Sure, they’ve already eliminated many. But don’t expect to be walking into cavernous buildings barren of staff. The same can be said for electronics stores.

For sure, apparel and department stores are prime candidates for downsized labor costs as long as technology inhibits five-finger discounting from destroying a retailer’s bottom line. Consumer affinity for off-price apparel stores amply demonstrates that help is not necessary on the selling floor. Even Macy’s is now finally embarking on a Backstage off-price concept in an attempt to prolong its corporate lifespan, having let Nordstrom Rack and Saks’ Off Fifth enter the battle with Marshalls, T.J. Maxx and Ross Stores decades ago. 

It has been noted that even as store-based personnel are vanishing the number of warehouse staff is multiplying. Amazon, if not already there, is the number one apparel retailer, with all sales coming from its warehouses or those of its vendors. The reduction of apparel outlets will continue. 

Some retail innovations take years, even decades, to catch on. Thirty-six years ago a retail industry guru named Alton F. Doody decided he had preached enough. During his illustrious career he had counseled such groundbreaking retailers as Walmart and Target, but now he wanted to test an idea for a store of the future: Investment Clothiers. It was a concept where men and women could try on samples of suits, jackets and pants, then leave empty-handed with the knowledge that their selection would be pulled from a warehouse and ready for pickup or delivery the next day. 

Doody chose Cleveland, where I interviewed him, as one of his test markets. Cleveland, after all, was a very corporate city back then. Lots of men and women needed affordable business wear. Alas, the experiment failed.

Doody was decades ahead of his time judging by the positive results enjoyed by Bonobos, a menswear retailer just purchased by Walmart. Begun as an Internet retailer, Bonobos has opened dozens of stores where goods are showcased, customers are measured and fitted, but product is shipped at a later date.

If you’re old enough you might remember a hot concept of the late 1970s and early 1980s—the catalog showroom. Sales from companies like Service Merchandise, Best Products and Luria’s ranked among the top 100 retailers. They displayed hard goods in showrooms, fulfilling customer desires on the spot from extensive behind-the-wall warehouses. 

Okay, sometimes, often actually during high traffic periods, the wait for your purchase to be pulled off the back room shelves was exasperatingly long. And small showrooms meant fewer model options could be offered compared to those available at a traditional discount store. So it was not surprising the catalog showroom concept disappeared when Walmarts and Targets, not to mention Kmarts, appeared at virtually every crossroad. 

What all this means is retailing is among the most evolutionary of enterprises. As The New York Times related in two articles on April 15 (https://nyti.ms/2oJWGwQ and https://nyti.ms/2odz8xo), retailing is evolving faster than perhaps in any previous time. It is too early to seriously consider mass retailing on a robotic scale, but there surely will come a time when a segment, too soon to say how small or large, will accept automated, non human service. I just don’t see its widespread implementation during my transactional lifetime.