October 2012. One year and two months ago. I had an idea! Being fresh out of college and fresh in a new job on an accelerated development track within a large luxury goods company, excitement for innovation was top of my mind. But everyone told me it was too crazy to work. “Too many things would have to change,” some said.
I appreciated their insight but I kept thinking about it on my own. Entrepreneurship is about coming up with something that other people think is crazy. "If they don't think you are crazy, then you're not thinking big enough," a friend once told me. So I refused to forget about it. I continued to wonder: with so many options for making purchases, and the ability to have things shipped to our homes, why must we continue leaving stores with so many bags? Is it in the best interest of (struggling) retailers to hold so much inventory so that we can have the option, if we so choose, to purchase in store rather than online?
Today, variations of this idea are all over the internet. Just Google “retail shopping” or “showrooming.” Through all the Forbes, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal articles, there has only been one article and one person who has come close to saying what I have in mind. Ashely Lutz, innovation writer for SAP blog, wrote in the beginning of 2013 that "Inventory could conceivably not even exist in the “store” environment at all, but be shipped directly to your home from a distribution center." YES!!! Thank you, Ashely! Can we please have a coffee chat soon?
Ashely does not go into explaining why this would be such a fantastic idea, though. So here is my explanation.
I appreciated their insight but I kept thinking about it on my own. Entrepreneurship is about coming up with something that other people think is crazy. "If they don't think you are crazy, then you're not thinking big enough," a friend once told me. So I refused to forget about it. I continued to wonder: with so many options for making purchases, and the ability to have things shipped to our homes, why must we continue leaving stores with so many bags? Is it in the best interest of (struggling) retailers to hold so much inventory so that we can have the option, if we so choose, to purchase in store rather than online?
Today, variations of this idea are all over the internet. Just Google “retail shopping” or “showrooming.” Through all the Forbes, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal articles, there has only been one article and one person who has come close to saying what I have in mind. Ashely Lutz, innovation writer for SAP blog, wrote in the beginning of 2013 that "Inventory could conceivably not even exist in the “store” environment at all, but be shipped directly to your home from a distribution center." YES!!! Thank you, Ashely! Can we please have a coffee chat soon?
Ashely does not go into explaining why this would be such a fantastic idea, though. So here is my explanation.