Executive Summary

• This week’s note “From the Desk of Deborah Weinswig” discusses what Amazon has done with Whole Foods in the year since it announced it was acquiring the grocery chain and other changes in the US grocery sector over the last 12 months.
• ModCloth, the Walmart-owned clothing site, is opening brick-and-mortar stores in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Washington, DC, after years of operating mostly online.
• French retail group Carrefour has partnered with tech giant Google to allow customers in France to shop for Carrefour products across Google’s platforms, which include Google Assistant, Google Home and the Google Shopping website.
• Japanese online flea market Mercari is looking to raise $1.2 billion in an IPO in a bid to expand overseas and replicate its domestic success in foreign markets. Mercari stated in a regulatory filing that the IPO would value it at around $3.7 billion.