Fast Five | Dollar Tree Announces 'New Shrink Format' Stores? WTF?

Hello Omni Talk Fans! You do this job long enough and you start to recognize patterns.

For example, the headlines are always a little slow from about the middle of July until late August, and then they ramp up in a flurry, which is why today’s newsletter is so much fun to write.

First, up above, you will see that one of our favorite Omni Talk guests from earlier this year, Dematic’s Kim Baudry, made a return appearance to discuss with us all the major ways retailers are changing their approaches to last-mile fulfillment.

Kim highlights everything from the move away from microfulfillment in grocery to the growing trend of leveraging software and manual labor over automation solutions. 

You can listen to what the always candid and frank Kim had to say in full by clicking here or the big image up above.

Second, look at today’s daily Fast Five headlines!

1. Dollar Tree’s CEO discussed rolling out “several new shrink formats,” a term I had heretofore never heard in my 25+ years of retailing. (Read More)
2. Shein and Forever 21 have signed a partnership deal to distribute each other’s products. (Read More)
3. Starbucks is experimenting with scanless checkout at its drive thrus. (Read More)
4. Sephora has rolled out contactless payments on employee devices at select stores. (Read More)
5. And Instacart did indeed file its much rumored IPO late last week. (Read More)

If those headlines don’t get your motor running, it may be time to increase the caffeine intake.

Be careful out there,

-- Chris, Anne, and the entire Omni Talk team

P.S. Our friends at the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Chad Lusk and Ben Lowden, stopped by for their regular monthly Fast Five appearance last week.

If you haven’t listened to the episode yet, I particularly loved Headline #4 where we discussed the hubris Trader Joe’s executives demonstrated around never putting self-checkout machines in their stores.

The psychology of why executives would make statements like that is fascinating.

You can give last week’s episode a listen by clicking here or on the big image right below this sentence.