The Magic Returned to Las Vegas Again This August

This week, the FGRT team attended the August Magic trade show, held every year in Las Vegas, Nevada. The show is produced by UBM, a UK-based event organizer that puts on more than 300 events per year. Magic is held… Continue Reading

Amazon: The Sleeping Dragon in Private Label

Amazon is much more than a household name, given that more than half of US households already have an Amazon Prime membership, according to Cowen and Company estimates. However, Amazon’s emerging private-label brands have not yet achieved widespread name recognition,… Continue Reading

Walmart and JD.com Strengthen Partnership and Launch New 8/8 Shopping Festival

The past week brought news that Walmart and JD.com, China’s largest e-commerce company by revenue, are expanding the strategic partnership they formed last year. One element of this is the launch of a new shopping event—the JD-Walmart 8/8 omnichannel shopping… Continue Reading

Amazon Is Playing Its Part in Changing the Back-to-School Shopping Season

Economic conditions look good for back-to-school spending this year—unemployment is low, consumer confidence is at a 16-year high, housing prices have risen and gas prices remain low—leading to healthy forecasts for shopping this season. Fung Global Retail & Technology expects… Continue Reading

Reviewing WeChat, a Communication, Connection and Commerce Ecosystem with Almost a Billion Users

We recently attended the Rise 2017 Conference in Hong Kong, which is one of the largest technology conferences in Asia. The event featured a talk by Stephen Wang from Tencent, which owns the WeChat mobile app. Wang gave an overview… Continue Reading

Prime Day’s Importance Lies in Driving Reconsideration, Not Just Sales

This week saw Amazon offer up its third annual Prime Day—a feast of special offers available exclusively to Amazon Prime members. By the time this is published, many readers will have seen a slew of statistics on the sales values… Continue Reading

The Third Annual Amazon Prime Day Is Coming in Mid-July

As we look forward to the Fourth of July holiday and start easing into the dog days of summer, we also approach a major, if recently invented, shopping event—Amazon Prime Day—which will celebrate its third anniversary on Tuesday, July 11.… Continue Reading

Amazon Takes a Bite Out of the Grocery Market

Source: istockphoto.com

Amazon Takes a Bite Out of the Grocery Market Amazon’s planned purchase of Whole Foods Market is one of the most startling retail news stories of this decade, for several reasons: It is Amazon’s largest acquisition by far. The company… Continue Reading

Loyalty Programs Are About More than Just Loyalty (Hint: It Is the Data!)

Taipei, Taiwan - March 7, 2012: starbucks coffee shop in Taipei station front metro mall. It's the most popular coffee shop in Taiwan.

Retail loyalty programs have a long history in the US. According to rewards program solutions company Smile.io, these programs started in the 18th century, when retailers would give customers copper tokens that could be redeemed for future purchases. Starting in… Continue Reading