Blue Apron is a company that sells meal prep kits delivered to your door. Rather than shopping for food and then deciding what recipe you can make with what you've got on hand, Blue Apron and other meal prep services will sell you a recipe and the ingredients for it. The company describes its service like this: Blue Apron is a fresh ingredient and recipe delivery service that helps chefs of all levels cook incredible meals at home. We take care of the menu planning and shopping (providing you with fresh, locally sourced ingredients in pre-measured quantities), so all you have to do is cook … [Read more...]
Could Your Black Friday and Christmas Deliveries Cost Extra This Year?
The explosion of e-commerce has made package delivery companies like UPS and FedEx very profitable, and it has also stretched them to the limit. The most stressful times for the shippers have been around Black Friday and Christmas when a flood of deliveries can cause bottlenecks. To manage the wave of shipments coming in during the holiday season, UPS is plans to add surcharges to customer orders on the busiest days. Paul Ziobro reports: For UPS, the move signifies a need to get paid for a service that has become an integral cog in the holiday shopping period, when it must add planes, trucks … [Read more...]
Amazon/Whole Foods Deal Will Force Grocers to Upgrade Their Digital Efforts
Once Amazon gets its hands on Whole Foods, expect the company's engineers to be tasked with creating new ways to insert technology into the grocery business. Meanwhile, competitors like Wal-Mart, Kroger, and Costco will be trying to improve their digital efforts to keep customers satisfied. Angus Loten writes for The Wall Street Journal: “Whole Foods will soon become Amazon’s experimental playground for developing more sophisticated big-data marketing strategies,” Stephen DiFranco, a former vice president at Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo, who founded big-data strategy firm IoT Advisory Group, … [Read more...]
Fast Fashion and Higher Margins Keep this Retailer Strong
Retail is in a transformational period. The dawn of e-commerce and rapid delivery have changed the way people buy products. Some older companies, like J.C. Penney for instance, are having a hard time dealing with the new reality. Meanwhile companies like Amazon and Bonobos (recently purchased by Wal-Mart) have been able to thrive as online retailers. But some brick and mortar retailers seem to have cracked the code to success in today's fashion market. H&M has long been a poster-child for what has become known as "fast fashion" strategy. The technique uses rapidly changing … [Read more...]
Wal-Mart Employs Guerrilla Tactics in Retail War
Last week Amazon announced the purchase of Whole Foods, diving into the brick and mortar grocery business. Grocery has been the one bright spot in retail lately, and obviously Amazon wants in. Meanwhile big companies like Wal-Mart and Target have been trying to catch up to Amazon. Wal-Mart is taking an unusual step by asking store workers to deliver packages on their way home. The Wall Street Journal reports: Wal-Mart Stores Inc. WMT -4.63% is testing a program in which store workers deliver some orders placed on Walmart.com or Jet.com, a sign of how the retailer hopes to use its 4,700 U.S. … [Read more...]
New UPS Hub in Phoenix Will Cost $180 Million
A new UPS hub in Goodyear, AZ (near Phoenix) will bring 1,500 jobs to the area, and cost $180 million. The hub will expand Saturday deliveries in the Phoenix and Mesa areas. DCVelocity reports that the regular Saturday delivery will be expanded to more markets. In a related development, UPS will begin regular Saturday ground pickup and delivery services in Phoenix on June 3. In April, UPS launched regular Saturday ground service in response to the growing demand for e-commerce deliveries. It has long offered regularly scheduled air services on Saturdays. The program will cover nearly 4,700 … [Read more...]
Will a Farming Surge in South America Prop up Deere?
Farming equipment maker Deere expects South American farmers to buy 20% more tractors and harvesting combines after this year. Record harvests and increased profitability are giving South American farmers the confidence to buy. Meanwhile North American farmers aren't feeling the same, with expectations that they will purchase 5% less farm equipment this year. The slump in U.S. and Canadian sales is a bit of a backlash from recent success. Bob Tita writes in the WSJ: The slump, driven by years of strong harvests that have produced record global grain stockpiles, is pushing some U.S. farmers to … [Read more...]
Tesla, “Bursting at the Seams,” Will Build New Plant
A new SUV, the Model Y, from Tesla will be built at a new factory, according to Tesla CEO Elon Musk. The Model Y will be built from the ground up on its own platform, rather than sharing a platform with other Tesla vehicles. Musk says he's giving serious consideration to three factories in the U.S., and maybe 10 or 20 globally. Shareholders are eating it up. Tim Higgins reports at the Wall Street Journal: “We actually made a mistake in trying to derive the Model X from the Model S platform,” he said. “It would’ve been better to just design an SUV the way an SUV should be designed. Design a … [Read more...]
Will Private Infrastructure Investment Hurt Rural Areas?
President Trump has proposed financing a rebuilding of America's infrastructure with private funding, but some rural politicians are worried that will leave their constituents without benefits from the program. The theory is that private investors will only be interested in projects with high volume in urban areas. That could leave little investment left for rural projects. Ted Mann explains at The Wall Street Journal: Some rural lawmakers have already begun to raise doubts about the few specific infrastructure proposals Mr. Trump has made. Republicans such as Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas … [Read more...]
How Chinese Phones are Beating Apple and Samsung to New Markets
Chinese phone maker Tanssion makes the phones its customers want, it doesn't try to sell them on the phones it has. For developed markets, Transsion (which sells phones under the Tecno brand, and others) put two SIM-card slots on its phone, because many of its customers switch back and forth between services to get the best rates in different places. It also optimized its phones' cameras for the darker skin tones predominant in its markets. Liza Lin and Dan Strumpf explain this type of marketing. That kind of thinking partly explains how Chinese manufacturers managed to snare more than 40% of … [Read more...]
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