
One Click
By Richard L. Brandt
Retail has changed in peculiar ways. Beyond anyone’s forecast.
Things have changed beyond compare in retail.
Fast forward through the adolescence of retail’s third phase and here we are cheerleading cosmetics poster child Sephora as it goes down the route we have most anticipated for retail with its boutique-cum-experiential circus.
Meantime Harvard Business Review is settling for the idea we don’t need stores at all.
And if we take a leaf from Hawaii lusting after a basic income for all, why should we care? High streets can go to hell — or at the very least, evolve into leafy spaces we’ll unswervingly adore while passing them by in our self-driving cars.
Ah, the jangle of robots.
Why are we in this state of confusion? Let’s all point at the greatest success in etail. Let’s say hello at the radical metamorphosis of Jeff Bezos, whose physical stature is similarly impressive as his strong-as-Tyson Amazon.
Oh, Amazon. Hard to believe you started out selling us books alone. You little Trojan horse, you. If only we’d realised all that time ago that you were simply attempting to get under our skin so that once there like it was impossible to imagine life any other way.
377 million views and counting. Wait, what?
Maybe infecting society is a little strong. But there are absolute parallels between Amazon and In Time, the film that in my opinion really put our pal Trousersnake on the cinematic map.
In this dystopian pic Timberlake, as we all are, is kitted out with a forearm timer. Like sand those digits fall through our fingers, and it’s looking bleak for our Justin as nightmarish fates befall him time and again.
I imagine most retailers have that glowing green clock ticking under their noses. Amazon setting up shop literally can’t have helped fuel optimism.
Bezos isn’t just a smart thinker when it comes to redefining his physique. He’s equally shrewd at making the right decisions to at first dominate, then utterly conquer, an industry. Time and again. An almost human algorithm, he takes what he’s learned from past triumphs in key business sectors and melds it into a form that is repeatedly successful across others.
One Click is a brilliant analysis of how far we have come as a civilisation reliant on Amazon and its kin (Alibaba being its nearest competitor, but in an altogether different and less fragmented marketplace).
We haven’t seen the last of innovation at Amazon and, much as Google rarely changes the design of its home page (although as I write this changes are being made on a rather substantial level), you won’t see many differences in the way Jeff’s favourite toy continues to hypnotise our minds and wallets.
In fact, many are predicting this is the very beginning.
Recently we’ve seen Amazon continue its retail rout with the at-first peculiar, secondly logical acquisition of Whole Foods.
The always-remarkable Ben Thompson has a lot to say about why this all-in, multi-billion dollar move into groceries makes complete sense.
Because Amazon has always been its first and best customer, Ben says. And who’s going to shun the chance to steal a huge slice of our weekly committed spend when the loading door’s wide open?
Did we mention Amazon’s also gone in on the funding rounds to show its hand for indoor farming? Plenty of growth, indeed.
And in an age where shapeshifting at anything but a weekly rate is nothing short of glacial, Amazon’s started setting out its social stall for Prime members with Spark. It’s a shopping feed curated by your pals to help you spend more. The generosity of this beast of business is unbounded.
With its play in social networking we’re seeing Amazon thinking more widely and with greater pace and less grace than ever before. Who would have thought even a couple of years ago that Amazon would be locking horns with Facebook? Inconceivable!
And yet here we are.
One Click is a great primer for where we are and what will be. So read it.

