Amazon Go

Companies have been discussing "checkout-less" stores since forever, but nobody has been brave enough to do it due to the perceived threat of shoplifting.

And while shoplifting is a legitimate threat, are non-shoplifters going to be turned into shoplifters without a checkout? Are normal shoplifters stopped by checkouts? These are the core questions, and until it is tested nobody will know for sure.

Target is getting awfully close to this. With their Cartwheel app you're meant to scan all your items as you shop (so it auto-applies coupons and discounts); but they haven't taken it to the next logical step and allowed you to provide your Cartwheel output at the checkout for checking out.

I will say that the way Target has implemented smartphone barcode scanning makes me think that there might be a future in all this. It is extremely painless, they just need to stop kicking you out of the scan screen when it finds a discount (i.e. it doesn't kick you out if no discount is found, but does when a discount IS found, that's problematic for efficiency reasons).

I own a house in Bentonville, Arkanasas. I now live in Denver, but owning a property in Walmart's company town means I always pay careful attention to retail developments that threaten Walmart.

I know a lot about the various retail companies and how effective they are with technology. Anyone that thinks Target is going to do anything effective in this space doesn't understand how god-awful their entire logistics/supply chain is. It's legendarily bad.

Amazon is another story. And this particular technology is something that can destroy Walmart, eventually. I'll be watching this very closely, because if I see enough headway being made I'll be selling my house before the disaster hits the market there.

Honestly though, groceries and CPG are HARD. I suspect that Amazon has simply thought about cost-savings from having minimal staffing in a store and used it to justify the insane capital costs of an RFID tag on every item and the scanners/camera/compute needed to operate the Go store.

What's always so funny to me is how the millennial generation in general has a hugely negative view of Walmart for paying poorly and destroying small businesses, while having a positive view of Amazon. In this case, Amazon will continue to do what it's been doing (destroying businesses) while paying nothing, because it's automating away a huge segment of work. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but it's definitely going to happen, and like self-driving vehicles, this is going to disrupt society big time.