Executive Summary

Walmart hosted its 2018 Investment Community Meeting in Bentonville, Arkansas, on October 16. Key messages from the presentations made at the meeting include:

• Execution: Management cited 16 consecutive quarters of positive comps as evidence of its momentum and said that investments made over the past few years are paying off.
• Unique assets: The company has built a portfolio of assets that include shopping, social media and loyalty, financial services, health and wellness, digital entertainment, advertising, logistics and home and personal services.
• Reduced earnings guidance due to acquisition of Flipkart: The company reduced its FY19 adjusted earnings per share (EPS) guidance to $4.65–$4.80 from $4.90–$5.05 previously. Walmart expects comparable sales of 2.5%–3% and e-commerce net growth of 35% in FY2019.

Executive Summary

• Groupe Casino reported steady growth in French comparable sales, which rose by 1.9% year over year in 3Q18.
• General merchandise website Cdiscount saw revenues fall but gross merchandise volume increase, due to a higher proportion of third-party sales. Comp growth in Latin America accelerated.
• In France, Monoprix recently started selling via Amazon Prime Now and management reported that the number of orders placed through Prime Now had exceeded its projections.

Executive Summary

The Coresight Research team will be attending and participating in the Groceryshop 2018 conference, which runs October 28–31in Las Vegas. The team behind the Shoptalk retail and e-commerce conference founded this new event, which will cover the disruption of the grocery, consumer packaged goods (CPG) and related industries.

• The conference is expected to bring together 1,000 attendees and more than 150 speakers. Discussion topics will include the transformation of the retail industry, including convenience stores, supermarkets and e-commerce, and changes in the production and distribution of CPGs across multiple retail verticals. Additionally, the event will cover shifts in consumers’ shopping behavior and how they want to shop in the future in both brick-and-mortar and online formats.
• On October 28, Coresight Research CEO and Founder Deborah Weinswig will emcee a startup pitch competition featuring 12 innovative, early-stage technology companies that provide solutions to solve major problems in e-commerce, grocery retail, and/or the food or CPG sector.The participating startups are Adrich, Forager, IceCream Labs, IntraPosition, Locai Solutions, Nextuple,Observa, Packyge, Shelf.ai, Simplista,Tastry and Tochize.
• In this report, our second in a series of daily Countdown to Groceryshop 2018 reports, we profile Shelf.ai, which facilitates grocery conversational commerce, making it easy for retailers to integrate voice-based shopping capabilities into existing e-commerce and loyalty systems and intuitive for shoppers to build orders by speaking.

Executive Summary

The Coresight Research team will be attending and participating in the Groceryshop 2018 conference, which runs October 28–31in Las Vegas. The team behind the Shoptalk retail and e-commerce conference founded this new event, which will cover the disruption of the grocery, consumer packaged goods (CPG) and related industries.

• The conference is expected to bring together 1,000 attendees and more than 150 speakers. Discussion topics will include the transformation of the retail industry, including convenience stores, supermarkets and e-commerce, and changes in the production and distribution of CPGs across multiple retail verticals. Additionally, the event will cover shifts in consumers’ shopping behavior and how they want to shop in the future in both brick-and-mortar and online formats.
• On October 28, Coresight Research CEO and Founder Deborah Weinswig will emcee a startup pitch competition featuring12 innovative, early-stage technology companies that provide solutions to solve major problems in e-commerce, grocery retail, and/or the food or CPG sector.The participating startups are Adrich, Forager, IceCreamLabs, IntraPosition, Locai Solutions, Nextuple, Observa, Packyge, Shelf.ai, Simplista, Tastry and Tochize.
• In this report, our first in a series of daily Countdown to Groceryshop 2018 reports, we profile Locai Solutions,whose turnkey e-commerce platform is specifically designed for grocery retail. The fully customizable, end-to-end solution combines an engaging shopper-facing front end with fulfillment management software. The front end provides personalized product and recipe recommendations as well as endless-aisle capability.

Executive Summary

The Coresight Research team attended XRC Labs’ Cohort 6 Demo Day at Parsons School of Design, New York City, on September 27.

• Pano Anthos, Founder and Managing Director of XRC Labs, kicked off the event with his talk on how the store—as a format and an experience—is evolving and how retail is in a dramatic state of change.
• Cohort 6 is a mix of startups from the artificial intelligence (AI), second-hand retail, personalization, health and wellness, interactive tech and digital marketing sectors.
• The 10 participating startups provide solutions that use data analysis for better decision making and for improving customer experience. These startups were: Fabulyst, Holi Chow, IRL, Mayawell, RELOVD, RetailDeep, Simplista, VirtualAPT, VisuWall and eat2explore.

Executive Summary

Sears Holdings has filed for bankruptcy. In this report, we consider which major retailers could gain sales should all Sears department stores ultimately close.

• Walmart and Target would be in strong positions to pick up sales: Coresight Research’s consumer data shows high apparel cross-shopping rates at Walmart and Target among Sears shoppers, and over half of Sears stores have a Walmart or Target store nearby.
• Among the department stores, JCPenney looks best placed to capture shopper dollars in the event of a total Sears closure. JCPenney sees high rates of apparel cross-shopping with Sears, it registers the highest geographical overlap with Sears stores, and its position is bolstered by the recent strengthening of its appliances offering.
• Home Depot and Lowe’s would likely capture some share of appliance sales should Sears close down: 40% or more of Sears stores have such rivals within two miles. Warehouse clubs Costco and Sam’s Club see a much lower geographical overlap with Sears stores.