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Walmart Unveils 'Store No. 8' Tech Incubator In Silicon Valley (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is creating a technology-startup incubator in Silicon Valley to identify changes that will reshape the retail experience, including virtual reality, autonomous vehicle and drone delivery and personalized shopping. The incubator will be called Store No. 8, a reference to a Wal-Mart location where the company experimented with new store layouts. Marc Lore, chief executive officer of Wal-Mart's e-commerce operations, announced the incubator Monday at the ShopTalk conference in Las Vegas. The world's biggest retailer has been overhauling its online team to better challenge Amazon.com Inc. with greater selection and lower prices. Lore founded Jet.com, which Wal-Mart purchased in September for about $3.3 billion in pursuit of Amazon in the e-commerce race. Lore said Wal-Mart has an advantage over "pure play" e-commerce companies because of its large network of stores that attract shoppers for such items as fresh food. The incubator will partner with startups, venture capitalists and academics to promote innovation in robotics, virtual and augmented reality, machine learning and artificial intelligence, according to Wal-Mart. The goal is to have a fast-moving, separate entity to identify emerging technologies that can be developed and used across Wal-Mart.
Because I've shopped at the various brick-and-mortar stores, known people that have worked in the various brick-and-mortar stores, and basically I'm not going to shop at Walmart. They treat their employees badly, treat their suppliers badly and force quality down in the name of price, and as a result it's a shitshow going into their stores.
I see no reason to reward Walmart with my business. I'm OK with being in the minority on this, but either way, I'll spend the extra dollar and not have that experience.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Before you laugh, some history ... Walmart is/was a tech leader, they pioneered digitizing and automating the supply chain (orders, payments, etc) and inventory management (what, where, etc) back in the 1970s. They were also mining "big data" back then (more what and where - hurricane warning in gulf, move pop tarts from midwest distribution centers to gulf stores). Opening their "big data" is how they got suppliers to buy into their digital supply chain. Suppliers got to see their product sale at national, regional and even store levels with 15min granularity. All the cash registers reported to a store's minicomputer which then connected by satellite to headquarters to report sales.
My nut is incubating in your moms pussy
... force quality down in the name of price ...
Technically that is we the consumers that are doing that. Offshoring, low quality, etc ... those are not CEO choices, those are consumer choices. When presented with two products, one domestically produced, higher quality and higher priced, and the other produced overseas, lower quality and lower priced, we the consumer overwhelmingly choose the lower priced. We reward the supplier that offshores and reduces quality. If we consumers showed a preference for local goods and/or higher quality goods that is what Walmart would stock the shelves with. They stock what sells, we decide what sells.
... is that Amazon won.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Then you get the robots,
Then you get the power,
Then you get the women.
Then you get the robot women.
Profit!
The article says: "... its large network of stores that attract shoppers for such items as fresh food." People actually go to Wally's for fresh food? In whose imagination? Those stores must be in third world countries or some part of ours that resembles one.
Walk into Store No. 9 every day for a week and buy up all the frozen pizza and waffles you can carry. Take them to San Francisco and give them to charity. Send me the bill.
you're confused, that's a much more likely scenario for ghetto thugs getting ammo or narcotics in the future.
Most the MAGA group gets their ammo legally over the counter, and don't hunt minorities. In fact, instead, you'll find the aforementioned ghetto thugs the primary hunters and rapers of other humans.
When did silicon valley define "innovative" to mean "Almost as boring as the same old shit"?
This jet.com for example appears to be amazon as it has existed since 1998, except prices are going to be even harder to figure out. Oops, I'm sorry, I mean "ALGORITHMS! MAGIC! "LOWER" PRICES!"
When you say "innovative" I think new like the first iphone after I had a fliphone, or like CRISPR DNA editing. Tech bros say innovation though and mean "This iphone doesn't have headphone plugs!"
Walmart pretending to be "innovating" means we should probably just give up the word entirely, it's fucking dead.
to blame the working class. Americans shop on price because we're desperately trying to maintain our standard of living in the face of declining wages. Those wages are declining because of globalization and automation. Both of those started in the 60s after communism was neutralized as a threat (real communism, not the phone crap Mao & Stalin pushed).
Walmart's slogan nails it: You're not destroying Unions and plunging the country into the worst income inequality since WWI; you're saving money, living better.
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I see no reason to reward Walmart with my business.
"Reward" them? Is that how you see yourself, the belle of the ball that all retailers should bend over backward to please just so they can "deserve" your benevolent purchase of low-quality chinese dishware and apparel?
Buying and selling are two sides of a shared transaction. Neither side is "rewarding" the other. If you don't want to do business with Walmart, go somewhere else to buy your toilet paper for a little more. They're not going to go bankrupt over your boycott or over the strongly worded Facebook posts you make. There's plenty of people who are more than happy to accept a less comfortable shopping experience in exchange for lower prices.
lucm, indeed.
You're oversimplifying a complex issue to blame the working class. Americans shop on price because we're desperately trying to maintain our standard of living in the face of declining wages. Those wages are declining because of globalization and automation.
Globalization is in part a result of the consumer's willingness to consider price above any other consideration. The consumer drives the offshoring process through their choices, their "tragedy of the commons" logic. CEOs may be greedy but it is sales that satisfy their greed, and it is consumers who decide whether offshoring improves or hurts sales.
Walmart's slogan nails it: You're not destroying Unions and plunging the country into the worst income inequality since WWI; you're saving money, living better.
The thing is Walmart is not creating that behavior, they are capitalizing on that pre-existing behavior, they leverage the pre-existing behavior.
You are confusing "technology" with "IT Sector". Those are two completely different things. Wal-Mart was innovating with technology a long time ago, increasing efficiency and automating a lot of information flow - for their own purposes. I thought all that was widely known. I think that they weren't quite as prepared for the web presence, and although they were in it early, they don't dominate like other players. I remember reading about how they deployed RFID to their warehouses to track trucks, and how they optimized shipping routes, etc. All high-tech, but not necessarily consumer facing.
Having said that, I don't shop there unless I absolutely need something quickly that nobody else around has... maybe 2 or 3 times a year. IT people or managers might be paid well, but my brother used to work for them and he absolutely hated it. As soon as he could find something else he left. They kept him at a certain number of hours to avoid having to offer insurance. If there is one thing I haven't heard about Wal-Mart, it's that they treat their employees well.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Except that for most things you spend more when you buy at walmart because the quality is much lower.
And this is a problem because? Sometimes you want something cheap. Sometimes you don't. I buy the shows I go to the office at walmart for less than $20. Cheap pair of docker and polo shirt knock offs (or from Target) and voila, business casual for an industry (software) that doesn't typically give a shit about what you wear.
Now, for running shoes, a nice pair of trekking sandals, or for dress shoes to go with my business suites (when I have to be formal) I spent a lot more on that.
Additionally, some people cannot afford to buy anything but cheap and rely on walmart for bulk purchases or the dollar store. That shit you are spouting right there is kind of dogmatic, spouted from a position of privilege.
I never buy anything from walmart either because of this and because of how shitty they treat not only their employees.
Sure they are shitty in terms of pay, but 1) employees are not forced to work there or, say, McDonalds (disclosure, I worked at McDonalds 26 years ago), and 2) is it really solely's Walmart's fault?
We have a society where every fucking body exercises an "everyone for himself, I got mine, fuck you very much attitude." Everyone. Including SWJs.
We have no reasonable health care system separated from employment (be it single payer or government regulated.) Furthermore, we have no reasonable pension system either (no, social security ain't it.)
What's worse, people on the receiving end of inequality keep voting against their own interests either by action or inaction.
By action like those flyover country imbeciles who are now panicking after realizing their beloved ACA/Medicaid expansion benefits were one and the same as the hated Obamacare free shit handouts that (supposedly) inner city moochers were getting.
By inaction, like those many blue voters who were also dependent on government programs, who understood the threats posed by promises of mindless, absolutist "small government" government, but who could not fucking bother to go vote because they didn't like the major candidates.
So here we are, from bad to worse if you are poor. Of all the rich countries in the world, we are the ones were being poor is really fucking catastrophic.
Companies like Walmart simply operate in a culture and governance that represents people's attitudes. We are fucking complacent with the many problems that plague us, but we do nothing about it other than bitching about "evul corps".
Corporations do not have an obligation for social engineering. Government does (and ergo, by the people who vote or choose not to vote.)
This is the richest country of poor people the world has ever seen. By design, by the people. Them wounds are self-inflicted.
The whole "I ain't gonna buy from Walmart hurr durr", that's bullshit. It changes nothing (since the problem is not there), and it hurts employees who obviously rely on a store's ability to sell to make a paycheck.
Sure, delude yourself into thinking you are standing up to something by choosing not to buy at Walmart. That'll show them meanies.