Walmart is an amazing story of entrepreneurship and, as one of the world's most powerful brands, touches millions of lives every day.
Amazon has well passed any expectations of its ability to change distribution and marketing.
The biggest thing is online shopping. So that you don't have to dress up, go down Bond Street or Rodeo or wherever, go and be intimidated by shop assistants to buy Gucci shoes or a Prada dress. You can just go online and, if it doesn't fit you, send it back. And I think that is the biggest, biggest difference, because that means everybody can do it.
Booksellers initially thought of Amazon as their best friend. They were coming in, and they were challenging Barnes and Noble, and Borders, which were the big, dominant corporations of the day, and that they would disrupt them and make them less powerful, but they could never envision that Amazon would overtake them all.
Almost no one wants to admit the genius of Jeff Bezos and Amazon. Apparently, many have failed to see that Amazon has become the world's biggest retail company.
Fashion today is available to everybody in a way that it's never been before: you've got every designer you've ever heard of working for H& or Target. That's fantastic.
Curbside is primed to fundamentally change the way people shop - by creating a seamless way for consumers to access products from local merchants - by successfully developing complex location and inventory technology.
At Bonobos, we believe that human beings are tired of shopping in stores.
Distributers don't need massive amounts of square feet to stock digital products. Retailers don't need brick-and-mortar stores to sell them. The entire supply chain for these select items has been permanently dematerialized. The marketplace has been blown to bits.
It was something new that was happening everywhere. You couldn't miss it. If you needed to go to the grocery you would go to the predecessors of the big supermarkets of today.
Ironically, I think some of the inspiration around Stitch Fix is really what was great about stores in the heyday of stores.
Amazon has done something for all of retail, which is resetting the customer expectations about how quickly and easily you can get things.
From the consumer perspective, what happened in the U.S. 10 years ago and Europe five years ago is now happening in Russia. People are beginning to understand that e-commerce is easy and safe.
What Sam Walton did was to go into one of the most mature industries of all and find a way to make it grow, grow, grow, double-digit, month after month, year after year. He did it by innovation, customer focus, and above all, speed.
I'm lucky that I was in retailing during the time that I call the golden age of retailing.
I think we can bring a new retail language to Rockefeller Center that would really change Midtown.
I wanted to create a new way of looking at retail.
We built Bonobos, with more than a few dozen customers and counting, and the industry we were disrupting didn't seem to care. Then we 'sold out' to Walmart. Abracadabra. The red carpet rolled open.
We have to do commerce differently because the WalMart system of big box chain retail will soon die. This means rebuilding local main street economies (networks of local economic interdependency).
