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July 9, 2018 • Issue 18:07:01
Retail disruptors redefine commerce

make it manifest." She noted that disruptors had to be large
enough to have industry impact but not so large as to be
unwilling to disrupt status quo.
Physical store still king

By and large retail disruptors were not ecommerce pure-
plays either. In fact, 87 percent of them operate stores.
"From JDA's point of view, we felt very strongly that the
store was going to maintain in importance, and the survey
demonstrated that," said JoAnn Martin, Vice President of
Retail Industry Strategy at JDA Software.

Industry expert Glenn Fodor, Senior Vice President and
Head of Information and Analytics at First Data Corp.,
weighed in, pointing out that online moving to offline is
trending, as evidenced by Amazon's purchase of Whole
Foods Market Inc. "Understand that those online sales are
By Ann Train only 10 percent of total retail sales, so it's 90 percent of the
world that they're not touching if they don't have a physical
etail today is undergoing a renaissance cata- presence," he said.
lyzed by business mavericks that are using
technology, imagination and measured risk to Researchers also discovered that no single vertical or
R connect with consumers like never before. This global market dominated in the disruptive realm. While
new breed of retail disruptors lives where growth and scale most companies in the disruptor group were focused on
intersect and places a premium on high-quality products sustaining high-growth and profitability, disruptors were
and services, speed and responsiveness, and the capacity to realistic about the possibility of success being short-lived,
reinvent customer experiences. were more concerned about product than price, and were
eager to embrace opportunities to support their vision.
Retail Systems Research, in partnership with JDA Software
Inc., set out to learn what delineates retail disruptors in an "There is a graveyard littered with retailers that grew like
online survey and personal interviews with global retail weeds and then just fell apart, because they couldn't create
executives across multiple industries. They published a sustained value proposition," Rosenblum said. "It really is
their findings in a report titled How Retail Disruptors Drive
Industry Change.

RSR found a majority of retail disruptors were neither very Contributed articles inside by:
large nor small upstart companies, but predominantly
in the mid-tier segment. Of the eight revenue categories Steve Norell ............................................................................................38
measured, the largest disruptive segment was the $500
million to $1 billion revenue group (25 percent), followed Don Bush .................................................................................................41
by $250 million to less than $500 million (17 percent). Jordan Olivas ..........................................................................................44
Barry Davis ..............................................................................................46
"I thought we'd find them in the $75 million range, but we
didn't," said Paula Rosenblum, Managing Partner at RSR TOC on page 3
and report co-author. "The reason we didn't is because they
don't have enough scale to really take a disruptive idea and
Continued on page 34