Target Thrived While Other Retailers Died. This Short Story Explains the Difference

What's the difference between an online retailer and a brick-and-mortar one today? Plus 7 other things worth reading.

We’re a few days into the 2019 holiday shopping season. If you’re looking at it from a business perspective there are two key statistics:

1. Overall sales are up compared to last year.

2. However, the brick and mortar portions of those sales have fallen 6.2 percent.

Obviously, that means we’re shopping even more online, but it’s more interesting to me what it doesn’t mean. (Not anymore, anyway.)

In short, it doesn’t necessarily mean good news for Amazon, and bad news for retailers like Walmart and Target.

The reason: the dichotomy between digital merchants and and brick-and-mortar retailers is disappearing. The big ones are all-in on both sides.

Recently, I traced how Target survived that convergence—and even thrived—after it did something that seems insane with the benefit of hindsight: it outsourced its entire digital operation to Amazon nearly 20 years ago.

It’s a fascinating bit of history, and one that people have already started to forget.

I’m Bill Murphy Jr. Welcome to Understandably, a d…