Wednesday, February 3, 2016

Updates

February 5, 2016: more on that Amazon story from WSJ: 

The revelation this week that Amazon.com Inc. may open bookstores across the U.S. would seem to defy a 20-year-old online blueprint to pummel brick-and-mortar retailers with cutthroat prices and a seemingly limitless product selection.

But Amazon’s apparent plan to build a physical presence in shopping malls and urban centers is following the playbook of smaller Internet retailers that are finding early success reaching shoppers via storefronts and kiosks.

Web retailers including eyeglasses seller Warby Parker, jewelry outlet Blue Nile Inc. and clothing boutique Bonobos Inc. are addressing one of the biggest disadvantages of online shopping with showroom stores that enable customers to touch, feel and try on goods before they buy them online. Their small outlets also act as brand boosters, helping offset the prohibitively expensive costs of acquiring customers online.

Original Post

 

From The Wall Street Journal today.

Wow, ChemChina will buy Swiss seeds and pesticides for $43 billion. This is absolutely huge.

Chinese companies shopping abroad at record pace.

GM’s fourth-quarter profit surged amid growth in China and booming sales of pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles in the U.S.

But the biggest news of the day: Amazon considers opening up to 400 bookstores, expanding Seattle experiment. Online retail giant Amazon considers large expansion of Seattle prototype book store, joining online retailers that already have opened physical stores and posing a potential threat to Barnes & Noble. Sure, why not? Open the warehouses to the general public. Barnes and Noble took years to build to 640 stores; and, the 255 Books-A-Million stores which I avoid at all costs. If one has a choice, Half-Price Books is so much better than Books-A-Million. [Did someone let the "cat out of the bag?"]

Isn't this interesting. Toyota ending the Scion brand. Toyota Motor Corp. is killing its Scion brand, folding the vehicles back into the Toyota brand portfolio, 13 years after the brand debuted and helped the company capture young buyers. I always wanted a Scion, but I wanted a Tesla or a Volt first. 

Comcast profit buoyed by growth in video and broadband subscribers. Comcast increased video customers in the fourth quarter, adding to a surprising comeback for the cable industry in a weak overall pay-TV market. 

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Wind: This Might Make Sense For England -- Might Is The Operative Word

World's largest wind farm announced: Denmark’s Dong Energy, part-owned by Goldman Sachs, is going ahead with the world’s largest offshore wind farm, the Hornsea project off the coast of northeast England, making it the first of its kind to have the capacity to produce more than one gigawatt of electricity.

The 1,200-megawatt project, located 120 kilometers off the coast of the county of Yorkshire, will be the first offshore wind project is set to power more than a million British homes, the company said. The project will receive U.K. government support in the form of a fixed tariff for the first 15 years of production.

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Bots: Increase Warehouse Productivity By 800%

Techinsider is reporting:  

The bots work alongside humans and do all the normal grunt work. Warehouse workers usually walk 12 to 16 miles each day. With the robots, they don't have to.

The robots now meet the human workers in the middle of the warehouse. As soon as someone completes an order online, the bot's system knows exactly where to go in the 275,000-square-foot warehouse.

Each bot (which doesn't look anything like a human) has a platform for arms and a two-foot-diameter base with wheels for feet. It zips around at about 4.5 mph, or the equivalent of a fast walk. If stray boxes or wires stand in its path, its vision technology can "see" in real-time to avoid them.

Since the robots are able to move faster than humans without tiring, Welty says the system will boost warehouse productivity by up to 800%. The bots will also not be subject to human error, which means that they can get the order right nearly every time.

As a way to increase productivity and speed, many online retailers have been using robots, conveyor belts, and cranes to fulfill orders for the past decade. Amazon has exclusive rights to Kiva Systems' robots, but Welty says Locus' robots are smaller, and more lightweight and versatile.

Unlike Kiva's bots, the Locus robots can be incorporated into the warehouses' existing infrastructure. The warehouse doesn't need to move any shelves or aisles. Locus can program the robot to navigate the warehouse exactly how it is. 

Sort of like Roomba.