Amazon vs. Walmart (Regular Entry)

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Screw it. We've been desperately trying to avoid mention of Amazon but it's simply impossible. This week Amazon ($AMZN) launched its Kohl's ($KSS) takeover...uh, partnership...pursuant to which consumers can buy Amazon products at Kohl's locations and return Amazon shipments for processing. In other words, Kohl's has become a return center for Amazon. Nothing to see here. Meanwhile, Amazon took over a few floors above the Macy's ($M) location in Seattle. Nothing symbolic about that whatsoever. Amazon has also partnered with large apartment landlords to install lockers inside large buildings. That's one way to dominate the "last mile." And people were in an uproar about that (dumbass) startup Bodega? Imagine this: "Hey Alexa, order me some toilet paper please." Within ten minutes your apartment building doorman calls you and says you have a package. How can that be? Well, just so happens the Amazon Locker in your apartment building has a stockpile of toilet paper laying in wait. Mark it: we're headed in that direction. And nobody seems to realize it. Bezos is laughing at the Bodega founders right now as he surreptitiously dominates local small business. If he has time to laugh while simultaneously wrecking fashion, that is. 

Busted Tech: Early Call on Bodega

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If your head was buried in the sand (or you don’t have a Twitter account), you may have missed the coverage of - and subsequent and violent objection over - a new startup called Bodega. This is the piece that started the whole debate. And subsequently “disrupted” our twitter feed with lots of people vehemently opposed to the cultural appropriation of the concept/term/business by a couple of nerdy ex-Googlers awash with Silicon Valley greenback. Turns out that maybe they shouldn't have been so cavalier about displacing the neighborhood egg-and-cheese maker. We mean: people were REALLY mad. People APPARENTLY really LOVE paying $3.50 for a bag of M&Ms and $36 for a pack of cigarettes; they REALLY love paying for Amazon Prime but - cough - like, never using it to purchase goods that they could -- cough, cough -- get at a bodega. Spare us. Here are the founder’s words. Anyway, no flaws to see here. Just a lot of defensive responses like this. If sometimes in the future we're writing a bit about some incumbent being massively disrupted by Bodega we may tar and feather ourselves.