What: A thought on the impact of tech in retail

Why it is important: Benedict Evans emphasizes the fact that tech will not change retail, some fundamentals will remain the same for all retailers, we are just too early in the process to have the full picture.

Benedict Evans releases every week a newsletter on Tech and its involvement in any sector or activity, including retail. This week, he reviews the music, books, cinema and TV industries, and how they were disrupted by tech, to try to anticipate what will happen in the retail sector. Interestingly, his take is that, once the dust settles, people will realize, as it has been the case for these industries with their own problematics, that questions that matter will be retail questions, not tech questions. In his own words, ‘doing online properly is both necessary and hard, but your success will be determined by retailing questions’. Walmart grew thanks to trucks and cars but was not build by car people from Detroit. In the same manner, retailers will be the ones re-inventing retail in the future, not Silicon Valley.

Outgrowing software