Anyone Care To Guess What THIS Will Do To Big Box Retail?

As much as I love technology, and I really love technology, I was frozen in my tracks after seeing this little gem of an application. Information is power, that's for sure.

Consider this: you're shopping for a television in a big box store. Let's say you find a 42" LCD that you love. The price is $1,499 in the store + sales tax. You whip out your Android-powered phone (i.e., Android = Google powered, it's available now at T-Mobile), scan the barcode of the product right there in the store and, within seconds, a list of online retailers shows up with the same product for $400 or $500 less with free shipping. Next to this is a button that says "Order Now?" What do you do? If it's me, I would order it from the online retailer without thinking twice and walk out of the store I was in. This is terrific and it is here NOW.



What struck me was the specter of what this kind of thing could do to brick and mortar retail. If physical stores cannot compete with this (and they cannot in my opinion), what will become of them? There are always people who will need things immediately (computer cables, DVDs, blank CDs, etc.), but when it comes to high margin stuff like televisions, digital cameras, and computers, life is about to become even tougher for retailers. Saving 30% and sometimes 50% by shopping online is pretty significant. Yes, buying products online has pretty much always been less expensive, but now a person can just point their phone at the product and have the information in seconds.

With the Apple iPhone and Amazon.com, all you need to do is take a photo of the product. They've gotten that smart. Pay attention to the video below at 1:17. Just take a photo of something like a TV and it will figure it out for you.



Will the world end up with fewer retailers and more fulfillment centers eventually? Time will tell and I would reason to guess we are headed in that direction. Not everyone uses this technology...yet. All it takes is a modest amount of consumers to stop buying high margin items from big box stores. Most of these stores are in trouble as it stands already and this could be the tipping point. I speak from a bit of experience as I was in the music business for over a decade and watched profits erode as MP3s and file sharing cut out the need for distributors. That's another subject, but that experience is still pretty fresh.

Blackberry Curve and some apps

Went from a clunker Treo 650 > BB 8703e > Curve. Verizon gave me a great deal on this with a 4gb Micro SD card and Seido holster. HUGE improvement from the 8703e. I've had clients picking on me for the fact I had an old phone that looked like it was 10 years old and large enough to be considered a weapon.

It was this or a 3G iPhone...lack of copy/paste on the iPhone sealed the deal. I'm not exactly sold on the lack of a keyboard, either. Even some dyed-in-the-wool Apple fans like Leo LaPorte went back to the Blackberry.

The other thing I'm enjoying is eTrade's Blackberry only application called eTrade Mobile. You may have seen the humorous commercials about this service. Ran pretty well on my old 8703 and seems just as stable on the Curve. Streams quotes and allows trades. Like the baby said. :)



I will agree the Blackberry platform does need a real browser like the iPhone. The Internet is where the iPhone shines.