Giving you something a little out of the ordinary this morning: 1. rock from 2. Missouri! Hembree has been jamming in their hometown of Kansas City for a few years now, but they’re starting to get a little media attention for their sonic momentum: in Had It All, they steadily layer bigger and bigger orchestration on top of their sweet vocals, evoking the optimism of LCD Soundsystem through a little 80s-inflected rock song. Not a bad way to start out Monday.
Here’s a cute article about stores that are surprisingly thriving in the age of Amazon. ‘They’re supposed to be dying’, the thread goes, ‘but instead they’re evolving and doing fine.’ Well, what do you know! According to the article, venues out of retail failure include strategically placed showrooms that complement otherwise ecomm-only shops; community gathering; coffee-and-commerce; instabait; pop ups; and strategic scarcity a la Supreme. All ideas we’ve heard before, as the links indicate, but one interesting thought is that it’s potentially less expensive to use your store and its prestige address as a real-life ad than it is to be constantly buying on Facebook, whose prices reportedly increased twofold in the first half of 2017. Point: brick-and-mortar.
*After the general treatise on the state of retail, the article goes on to analyze what’s working and why, through case studies with cost breakdowns of New York stores you know and love. Very involved and actually very interesting– take a read.
Remember that concept store that Amazon opened in Seattle where the presence of your phone in your pocket eliminates the need to physically pay? Amazon Go, it’s called, and now that they’ve done their pilot, they’re about to open up six more in new cities. How to succeed in retail in the age of Amazon? Seems like ‘be Amazon’ is a great trick.
No Frills, a Canadian grocery chain, just unveiled a line of highly-successful street style merch under the label Hauler. It’s cool enough that you may be tempted to dip your toe in, even with a total lack of emotional connection to Canada or its discount grocery stores. All of which is to say, somebody has a very smart, very permissive board of directors.
#haulhard