Bulletproof spreading the notion that butter coffee is healthy

image: http://media.philly.com/images/LIFE_HEALTH-BUTTER-COFFEE_1_LA.jpg

Bulletproof Executive founder Dave Asprey holds the signature drink in the hottest new health-meets-coffee craze on April 23, 2015 in his new Santa Monica, Calif., location. Bulletproof Coffee is opening up the cafe that specializes in this butter-fueled coffee that he claims is the perfect way to start the day, and leads to peak human performance. (Al Seib/Los Angeles Times/TNS)

RENE LYNCH, LOS ANGELES TIMES

POSTED: Thursday, April 30, 2015, 3:38 AM

(TNS) If you were wearing a blindfold while trying your first cup of Bulletproof Coffee, you might have trouble figuring out what makes it so different.

There’s a faint nuttiness to the taste, redolent of coconut. And an impossible richness that makes you feel like you’re drinking a fluffy down pillow, if such a thing were possible. The secret ingredient?

Butter. That’s right, butter.

Whipping butter into coffee is old news if you’re a health hipster — one of those CrossFitting, low carbing, Paleo living, biohacking, counter-culture types who believe a healthful lifestyle is slathered with fat.

Now the calorie-laden beverage is being introduced to the masses with a new cafe in one of the world’s most health-conscious cities.

“Santa Monica (Calif.) is ground zero for those who care about how they look and feel, and this coffee will change the way you feel,” said its creator, Dave Asprey, who is one of the Internet’s most well-known “biohackers,” using his own body as a petri dish of sorts for health experiments that play out on his popular website, Bulletproof Executive.

The Bulletproof Coffee cafe and shop is opening soon (exact date to be determined) at 3110 Main St. in Santa Monica. Asprey says servers will use only butter from grass-fed, pastured cows, and single-origin, organic coffee that’s grown, harvested and stored so as to be pesticide and toxin free, and less likely to cause inflammation in the body. The standard drink also comes with a shot of “Brain Octane” oil, which lends the coconut flavor. There are also add-ons and upgrades (for a price, of course), such as antioxidant herbs and spices.

Beverages will be served in laboratory beakers. Why? Because they’re cool, and because coffee tastes better from laboratory-grade glassware, Asprey contends.

This fetishism over the sourcing of ingredients, the attention to environmental detail and an avoidance of mold and toxins are all part of the philosophy behind Asprey’s website and new book, “Bulletproof Diet.” He says trial and error led him to this approach, which he says has helped him lose more than 60 pounds, and keep it off, and put him, at 42, in the best shape of his life.

Among the cornerstone beliefs of the diet? Fat is our friend, and our mass-produced food supply is rife with toxins and molds that cause inflammation and disease.

A cup of Bulletproof Coffee is a healthful breakfast that, he says, “turns off hunger and food cravings ... and helps put your body in a fat-burning mode for the rest of the day.”

Amanda Allen, the 2013 and 2014 CrossFit Games champion in the 40-44 age group, attributes her success in part to Bulletproof Coffee. And the Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond, the Food Network star and cookbook author, recently extolled its virtues to her massive online following: “Some people say it’s healthy. Others say it’s a fad. Some people say it will give you an energy boost like no other. Others say this is placebo. Me? I just say it’s magical.”

You might be wondering: Uh, what’s so healthful about dropping butter in your coffee?

Influential tech site Gizmodo called it a “scheme” to sell more coffee beans. “Alarm bells should go off any time someone claims that you should buy their expensive products for your diet,” added the pop culture website Vox.

But the debate over Bulletproof Coffee underscores just how divided we are over nutrition, weight loss and obesity — and our unquenchable desire for a quick, easy fix.

Health expert after health expert encourages the country to follow well-worn advice to ditch the junk food and sugar, go easy on the red meat and double up on veggies. Yet it seems that each week, we clamor over a new diet promising unbelievable weight loss if we only give up this or eat more of that.

And what would any trend be without a celebrity stamp of approval?

Actor Brandon Routh (“Superman Returns”), who is currently shooting “The Flash” and “Arrow,” says he’s been introducing the casts and crews to the Bulletproof lifestyle. The coffee has helped him take his fitness to the next level, he said. “It has given me so much more energy and focus.”

Late-night host Jimmy Fallon and actress Shailene Woodley (“Insurgent,” “The Fault in Our Stars”) recent bonded over a mugful: “It will change your life,” she said, adding that it’s good for curbing one’s appetite and starting the day with a healthful source of fat. “It’s so good,” Fallon added, and then joked that it made him gain 55 pounds.

Punchlines aside, Asprey and others like him believe that the nation is on the verge of dropping the “fat is bad” mantra and embracing fat in all its succulent glory.

Asprey said Bulletproof Coffee is the result of an experience he had while hiking in Tibet when it was minus 10 degrees. Exhausted, he was served a cup of yak butter tea. He said he felt immediately rejuvenated. The biohacker in him went to work.

If all goes well, Asprey says, he’d like to expand Bulletproof cafes nationwide.

One person you might not see at the Santa Monica cafe, however, is Mayor Kevin McKeown. Asked to comment on how the Bulletproof Coffee cafe might be received, he declined, saying, “I’m sorry, but this is very, very far from my areas of expertise. I like my coffee black and industrial strength.”

Amazon Expands Business-Sales Marketplace After Three Years

• By
 
• GREG BENSINGER
 
• CONNECT

Zuma Press

After three years of testing, Amazon.com is hoping to widen the reach of its business customer marketplace site with a rebranding and expanded product selection.

Amazon Business, as the site will be known, will offer some merchandise exclusively to business customers, as well as better prices for some goods, said Prentis Wilson, a company vice president. Amazon is phasing out Amazon Supply in mid-May in favor of the new site, which will require a business license to access.

The new marketplace, which will continue to sell things like beakers, wrenches, and wood sanders, potentially gives Amazon a leg up in a capturing sales that otherwise rely heavily on catalogues and specialty sites like industrial supplier Grainger.

Among the goods offered at special prices on Amazon Business are a Belkin iPad air case for $23.81, compared with $29.81 on Amazon.com and a Fellowes adjustable keyboard tray at $191.43 versus $209.82, according to a spokeswoman.

Wilson declined to say if the distinct pricing on Amazon Business was the result of the Seattle company’s contract with suppliers or whether Amazon is altering the prices itself after paying wholesale.

He said the site will also have business-specific advertising and products not offered elsewhere. Those include scientific goods like antibodies and protein screening kits, among “hundreds of millions” of other items.

In other ways, the site will operate like Amazon.com. Members of Amazon’s $99 Prime program will get unlimited two-day shipping and many of the goods will be stored in Amazon warehouses, said Wilson.

For now Amazon Business will be only for U.S. customers, but Wilson suggested it could expand internationally over time.

trade management

Need a Quick Fix? First Express Starbucks Lands in NYC.

I’m standing in an exceptionally small Starbucks. It’s a little over 530 square feet, which is bigger than a New York City micro-apartment but a shoebox compared to your average Starbucks. It’s full of texture, with reclaimed wooden two-by-twos on one wall, milky gray subway tiles on another, and industrial grade gold doors in front. It has none of the tables or banquettes that invite laptops and tired tourists in most of the chain’s 20,000 cafés. There’s just one slender wooden bar with some stealthy built-in electronics standing between the doors and the register. Through the glass doors, you can see the neo-classical architecture of the New York Stock Exchange.

This is the pilot store for the Starbucks express format, one designed to get you in and out faster than ever. It opens today on Wall Street, and the company plans to open four more in New York by the end of the year.

The location is strategic: symbolically and geographically, Wall Street is at the heart of the city’s financial district. The PATH train station from New Jersey is a few blocks away, as is the newly minted Fulton Center that links nine subway lines. There are, of course, many, many Starbucks stores nearby, but “you wouldn’t use this express format to replace a café store, you’d use it in places where there’s a commuter path where you know customers want to get that quick hit,” says Bill Sleeth, Starbucks’ VP of design for the Americas. “This is a test to prove from a business standpoint that we’re not filling our customers’ needs to get their coffee.” It complements a bigger plan brewing (sorry) at Starbucks, to meet its customers anywhere it hasn’t already: “We’re talking about delivery in the future. It’s part of a broad strategy.”

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COURTESY OF STARBUCKS

The Need for Speed

Express is a microcosm of a typical Starbucks, optimized for speed. Obviously, that means offering a limited menu, so there are no blender beverages like Frappuccinos. Less obviously, it meant redesigning the queue. When you walk into an express store, wayfinding cues will (in theory) guide you to the right. That’s where the backlit menu board is, instead of up high and behind the registers as in other Starbucks stores. On the right hand side of the slender bar, a Starbucks employee (or partner, in the company’s lexicon) at the built-in POS system takes your order. By the time you reach the register, a barista is preparing your drink. Pay, step about 5 feet to the left to retrieve your beverage, and turn left again to exit the tiny store. If all goes well, you can imagine a small current of customers making a continuous balloon-shaped loop through the store.

To get the timing right, Sleeth and his team ran several simulations. Starbucks won’t disclose the results, but if you’ve ever gotten so much as cup of drip coffee at a Starbucks, you’re familiar with the line kept in check by retractable barriers, and the bottleneck at the drink pick-up station. At 14 Wall Street, the designers have tried to strip all that out. Sleeth says New York, and the East Coast, is mostly a brewed coffee market, so baristas have easiest access to the drip coffee machines. Heating food items like egg sandwiches is the biggest time suck, Sleeth says, so warming trays are just beyond the drip machines.

You might say Starbucks already is about convenience, so why cannibalize stores with a faster one? That’s likely not the case. “For every kind for retail format, and especially for coffee and Starbucks, there are different shoppers with different missions. So you might have value shoppers, experiential shoppers, and utility consumers,” says Jason Goldberg, VP of commerce at Razorfish. “Starbucks obviously is not value proposition, so they’re catering to experiential and to utility. Utility is trying to get their dose of caffeine on their way to work, and experiential is trying to get their third place.” And for the utility shoppers, that third POS system in the front augments the feeling of efficiency. “It plays on smart psychology of queuing, because customers feel like their order is being made while they’re waiting, rather than wasting time while people decide what they want,” Goldberg says. “The perceived wait time is shorter.”

Conflict or not, Sleeth says Starbucks wasn’t motivated by convenience. Indeed, for many people—particularly New Yorkers—Starbucks calls to mind harried office workers getting 7 a.m. Americanos and overworked assistants juggling trays of lattes. This wasn’t the company’s intent 20 years ago. “The intent back then wasn’t to create this optimized machine,” Sleeth says. “It was to create something where the architecture mattered and to create a coffeehouse experience. This notion of third place wasn’t birthed by Starbucks, but I remember Howard [Schultz] coming in and saying we want Starbucks to be the third place. It’s not home, it’s not work, it’s something else.”

In the mid-1990s, Starbucks lost its way a bit. Business was booming, but at the expense of architectural ingenuity. To handle a period of rapid growth, the company’s designers would select from one of four layout templates to build out new locations. This spawned Starbucks’ reputation as a cookie cutter corporate establishment—one Schultz has been working to shake off since he returned as CEO in 2008. That’s when he and some of his international designers began opening elaborate concept stores in cities like Amsterdam and Mumbai. Designers got more leeway to experiment, leading to things like drive-thru outposts in recycled shipping containers and coffee shops staged inside moving trains.

A Trifecta of Experiences

More importantly—to Schultz and the company, anyway—Starbucks opened its Seattle Roastery in December. The 15,000-square-feet emporium is like a “Willy Wonka factory” for coffee drinkers, designed to highlight the company’s careful work on its Reserve coffee lines and to enlighten drinkers of the various brewing methods (Chemex pour over, Clover, etc.) The Roastery is the flagship of what you could call Starbucks’ immersive experience model (targeting the experiential shopper Goldberg mentioned), which is distinct from the express store model (for utility shoppers), and different still from its delivery model, which will launch in Seattle and New York later in 2015. 

This is what Starbucks is experimenting with going forward: a trifecta of experiences, each tailored to satisfy slightly more specifics needs than a regular caffeine kick. The Reserve bar caters to discerning, curious drinkers, while express, and ultimately delivery, service commuters and office workers.

As for the pilot express store, Sleeth and his designers will watch closely to see what works and what needs adjusting. “We’re trying stuff all the time,” Sleeth says. “If you think about it from a real estate standpoint, in the past we would have had to say we can’t really put a store there. This was an experiment in trying to understand what we can do, and if we can unlock more business.”

Fetch Robotics Introduces Fetch and Freight: Your Warehouse Is Now Automated

By Evan Ackerman

Posted 29 Apr 2015 | 11:00 GMT

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Photo: Evan Ackerman

As of just a few months ago, all we knew about Fetch Robotics was that the core team from Unbounded Robotics, all of whom had been at Willow Garage before that, were working on not just one but two brand new robots designed to tackle the logistics market. Today, Fetch Robotics is announcing Fetch and Freight, a beefy mobile manipulator and zippy mobile base designed to automate logistics in places like warehouses. We have all the details, exclusive video of the robots in action, and an in-depth interview with Fetch Robotics CEO Melonee Wise about why these robots are exactly what companies like Amazon and Google desperately need.

The Problem

Fetch and Freight are designed to do fulfillment in warehouse environments. Companies like Amazon have enormous warehouses full of shelves of stuff, and when you order said stuff, someone has to go get that stuff off of whatever shelf (or shelves) that it’s on, put it into a bin, and then send it all off to get packed up for shipping. This can be a miserable experience for the humans who work at it, who end up walking from one end of the warehouse to the other, hauling carts of whatever it is that you desperately need to have at your doorstep in two days or less.

Amazon, of course, has its own private fleet of robots that can bring shelves to people, but using these robots (from Kiva Systems) requires reconfiguring the warehouse with special shelving and adding other infrastructure. And even with this robotic warehouse, workers still need to manually pick the stuff off the shelves, which is probably why Amazon is trying to figure out how to do picking with robots. And Amazon isn’t the only company that needs this technology: Google Express, eBay Now, and all sorts of other e-commerce companies that depend on warehouses to get customers their goods as fast as possible all need robots, even if they don’t know it yet.

However, designing robots for environments like this has proven to be tricky. Warehouses are structured environments, which helps, but you’ve still got an enormous amount of variability in products to be picked, long distances to traverse, aggressive uptime requirements, humans to avoid accidentally murderizing, and on top of it all, robots have to be either more cost effective than people, or they have to augment an existing human workforce to make them more efficient. If your robot can’t unambiguously pull all of this off, it’s not going to make it in a warehouse, and Fetch Robotics thinks that their two-robot solution has what it takes.

The Solution

“In the process of designing Fetch, we had to narrow down to an application, and then we did the need-finding necessary to build a robot that had the right specifications for the application that we were going into,” explains Fetch Robotics CEO Melonee Wise. “The reason we’re doing two robots is because one of the big challenges in logistics is traversal of the warehouse. A mobile manipulator just can’t move as fast because it has a high center of gravity, and so we need a smaller, faster robot to zip around the warehouse and get stuff done. Because at some point, we have to be as fast as people, or faster.”

Fetch Robotics’ system uses a relatively large and capable mobile manipulator (Fetch) to pick items off of warehouse shelves, while Freight, a mobile base, acts as an autonomous cargo delivery cart. Fetch can pick items continuously, while a succession of Freights can switch in and out to move different selections of goods to different parts of the fulfillment center. Here’s a demo:

Freight can also be used by itself, following human pickers around a warehouse (using no beacons, only vision), meaning that they don’t have to push carts around and also that they don’t have to keep going back and forth to deliver items that they pick. Instead, they can pick continuously, relying on multiple Freight robots to make deliveries. Fetch Robotics calls this system “Follow Pick”:

Honestly, we’re not sure why this Follow Pick system isn’t already a thing, since it seems to make so much sense, providing tangible and immediate benefits to both workers and the companies that employ them. What seems likely is that safe and robust autonomous navigation has just not ever come together in a robot that’s cost-effective enough to be used in this context, but that’s one of the key differentiators with both Fetch and Freight: they’re (relatively) affordable.

The Robots

Let’s start with Fetch, the mobile manipulator. The centerpiece is the back-drivable 7 DOF arm, which is capable of lifting 6 kilograms. According to Fetch, this is a large enough payload to handle the vast majority (90-95 percent) of all items in a typical warehouse. Despite the large payload, Wise says that it’s still low power enough to be safe for humans to work around, and the robot’s software includes the ability to detect any collisions and stop the arm immediately.

Between the arm and the telescoping spine, Fetch has a grasping range all the way from the floor up to just under two meters, which can cover approximately the same manipulation range as a human. The gripper is modular with an ISO standard interface, and includes a dedicated Ethernet connection so that you can swap it out for something that includes a camera for up-close vision, or any other sensor you’d find useful.

While Fetch Robotics wouldn’t tell us how fast Fetch is at picking right now, they would say that their goal (which they seem confident is achievable) is to get Fetch operating “as fast as” a human picker.

Fetch has a PrimeSense 3D sensor in its head, which can pan and tilt. There are a bunch of mounting points up there for additional sensors, too. Fetch’s base includes a charging dock, a 25-meter range navigation and obstacle avoidance laser from SICK, and differential drive.

Freight is what you’d get if you took a chainsaw to Fetch at the waist, pretty much. It’s got the same differential drive and 25-meter range laser, which it can use to detect people and follow them around. As Wise commented earlier, the big advantage that Freight has over Fetch is speed: right now, it can comfortably hit 2 meters per second, although it’s possible to crank it up to 3 m/s. That’s jogging speed, and a not entirely comfortable jogging speed, either. It’s fast.

On top, Freight has a multitude of mounting points, so that if you want, you can put shelves on it, or whatever specific cargo transport system works best in your warehouse. Freight is comfortable handling 70 kg; it can actually handle more, if you’re willing to crank the speed down a little bit. Because, you know, momentum.

Both robots can recharge themselves autonomously, and they share a common dock. The dock is designed with a very distinctive shape to help the bots locate it with their lasers, and the dock connector is particularly clever, with some built-in wigglyness. The docks can charge the robots in 20-minute bursts to maximize uptime. During less frantic moments, the docks will also do 3-hour deep cycle charges to help maintain battery longevity.

From batteries to actuators, Fetch is designing both of these robots for work, not for research. They’re built to be durable. Wise says that the baseline minimum lifetime of the robots is about 13,000 hours in worst case usage, which would be asking the arm to constantly wave around a 6 kg payload. In more typical usage, Fetch is expected to be able to work 16 hours a day, 365 days a year, for four years before something breaks on it. Freight, not having a manipulator on it, should last even longer.

Along with the robots themselves, Fetch Robotics will also be providing high-level control software that can handle lots of different robots all at once, and integrate into existing warehouse fulfillment systems. Out of the box, the Fetch Robotics system will be able to handle mapmaking, semantic labeling, power management, and dynamic task allocation. All of this is, of course, based on ROS.

The Cost and Competition

The big question that we had at this point, and that you probably have as well, is how much these robots are going to cost. We wish we had a definitive answer for you. The problem, Wise told us, is that in a warehouse implementation, you’ll need to invest in a software and hardware system consisting of multiple robots, so a per-robot pricetag wouldn’t necessarily be appropriate.

However, we did manage to pin down a few things about cost: Wise did tell us that Fetch would cost “less than $100,000” and that Freight is less than a third of the cost of Fetch. Even if we assume that Fetch costs close to $100,000, if you compare it to other mobile manipulators like Tiago and RB-1, Fetch would be remarkably inexpensive for what it is, with commercial-grade robustness, a 6 kg payload, and a 25-m laser. 

We also heard that a research version of Fetch is in the works (hooray!) and we should be getting more details on that in the next few weeks.

As for Freight, it’s easier to make a comparison to other mobile bases, most notably Adept’s Lynx platform. We’re not sure how much Lynx costs, but we are almost certain that it’s more (perhaps way more) than $33,333.32, and Wise says that in terms of core capabilities, Freight and Lynx are “essentially very, very similar.”

The Future

Wise seems confident that Fetch Robotics is going to be able to ship both of their robots in Q2 of this year, just like they promised back in February. We should reiterate how crazy this is considering that the company is only about eight months old, and they only finished putting together the first Fetch robot in March.

We’ll likely see Fetch and Freight initially deployed in pilot programs in real warehouses within the next few months, but the first look that the public will get at the robots will be the research versions at ICRA in Seattle next month.

And as for what’s next, Fetch Robotics obviously has its grippers full trying to get two robots all set for commercial production. The company is currently at 13 employees (plus 5 summer interns) and trying to grow as fast as possible (they encourage you to apply here), but Wise was willing to give us a glimpse at what they’re thinking about for the future:

Wal-Mart CIO Karenann Terrell: Data Analysis Key To Customer Insights

After leaving a healthcare firm, Karenann Terrell, the CIO of mega-retailer Wal-Mart, found that data analysis at the company is "at a much higher level of sophistication than I had expected."

10 Trailblazing Companies For Women In IT

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Wal-Mart CIO Karenann Terrell offered glimpse of what it's like moving from a $15 billion healthcare company, Baxter International, to executive vice president and CIO of the $500 billion retailer in a talk on Tuesday at the InformationWeek Conferencein Las Vegas.

After formal remarks, a former colleague in the audience in the healthcare field asked her to sum up the differences between the two industries.

A former colleague from the pharmaceutical industry asked Terrell what was different between her previous job at Baxter and Wal-Mart."I expected a pervasive use of data in order to drive the business process," at Wal-Mart, Terrell responded. "I have seen it at a much more significant level of sophistication than I had expected. That's one advantage of scale at Wal-Mart."

Wal-Mart CIO Karenann Terrell

(Image: David Harding)

Data drives inventory systems for the movement of goods and placement of goods in individual stores, in an effort to ensure merchandise will be available where the demand occurs. Terrell continued that Wal-Mart collects large amounts of data that it needs to constantly analyze in order to stay abreast of retail trends.

"The thing I underestimated was the speed at which customers are changing in the retail business … the expectation of the customer to simplify the (shopping) experience, and especially the speeding up of the mobile experience. The patients at Baxter, not so much," she said.

In a footnote to the proceedings, she also compared her former home city of Chicago to Bentonville, Ark. "The quality of life in Bentonville is fantastic. It's a little known place with a fantastic amount of talent."

Classic Vs. Legacy

At one point, Terrell referred to modern Wal-Mart systems versus "classic" rather than legacy systems, explaining the choice of words this way: "Classic is respectful of the people who are actually going to be keeping the lights on," as new business applications are underway. "We don't have a choice about alienating people with language. Does anyone here believe they have all the talent they need? Let me know, 'cause we're interested in your talent," she said, and laughed, knowing there'd be few takers.

The process of modernizing legacy systems is also underway at Wal-Mart, but Terrell said if she put a date on when it would be done, she'd be wrong.

"Our classic environment -- the minute we roll through a modernization of that, we'll see new trends in technology and new capabilities emerge," Terrell said. "I think we're just in a continuous build-and-operate cycle now. I think that probably it's a lifelong venture …" At another point, she said the technology that her industry uses is constantly getting revised: "Think technology just has to be viewed as a continuum."

Wal-Mart is trying to modernize the backend systems that run 11,000 stores serving 250 million customers a week. "A primary motivator for us is the need for us to win, compete, and serve at the intersection of the digital and physical. Consumers want a frictionless experience," she related. In addition to the customer experience, Wal-Mart is constantly trying to lower the cost of technology used in each business unit to serve an overall goal of offering low prices to consumers.

Terrell has a policy of rotating her IT staffers through different requirements from the business, giving them exposure to the nature of logistics, point of sale systems and general ledger accounting.

"Change in technology is something you have to experience from multiple different aspects … We have people that move across store systems from point of sale to the back office and into inventory management," Terrell told the audience.

Despite its size, Terrell insists Wal-Mart IT be able to implement systems rapidly and fix them quickly if things go wrong. It's part of how such a big chain survives smaller and lighter-footed competition. "The one protection that we really focus on at Wal-Mart is speed … That means you're willing to try things. I know I'm looking at a lot of skeptical faces," she said from a stage that allowed her to view 150 of her peers.

By speed, Terrell was referring to IT's ability to implement new software quickly without disrupting production systems or implement new code in production systems themselves. "Imagine trying to roll out a point of sale change. If we were not expert at rolling it out and pulling it back, or rolling it out and fix, we would be releasing once or twice a year against our 100,000 of point of sale systems," she said.

Meantime to recovery from a roll-out gone awry is an important stat to her. With the speed-oriented approach, failures are going to occur. What's important is knowing how to recover quickly from a failure, she said.

But one of her most interesting anecdotes was in response to the question, "What did Wal-Mart learn from the breach at Target?"

"What Target taught the industry was you cannot have any single point of failure that you are not expecting to result in some vector of breach." Target attackers ignored the usual routes of attack and found a way to siphon information from of point of sale data collectors. Terrell said the only adequate defense was defense-in-depth, with system operations and network traffic patterns monitored for unusual or out-of-compliance behavior.

Experiencing a breach, Terrell said, "that goes on undetected for a period of time just exponentially changes the damage that occurs. The public impact and reputational piece went beyond what any of us would have expected. The first mover (Target) was very deeply affected."

Wal-Mart has learned to run monitoring applications that watch actions on the network and data movements between internal systems. It's learned to keep a "white hat" tester, scrutinizing its code on a continuous basis and looking for weaknesses before an intruder appears, she said.

Retailers like Wal-Mart have parts of their operations that look a lot like a bank, she added. "For that and other reasons, it must maintain vigilance against malicious insiders … as the most dangerous vector."

Bricks vs Clicks

Amazon offers Chinese online shoppers 1.6 million imported items

 BY FRANK TONG Senior editor, China

The number of imports is up from 80,000 in November when Amazon began promoting goods from its global sites to Chinese shoppers.

Amazon.com Inc. says it’s making headway in selling imported goods to online shoppers in China and helping Chinese companies sell abroad.

“The mission of Amazon China is to allow Chinese consumers to purchase high-quality products from all over the world,” Amazon China vice president Niu Yinghua said this week in a presentation to the Cross-Border E-commerce Summit in Shanghai. “We also help Chinese manufacturers, especially small and midsize companies to reach global consumers.”

Amazon launched a cross-border shopping subsite called Haiwaigou (which means “buy from overseas” in Chinese) on Amazon.cn in November. It allows Chinese consumers to buy products directly from international brands on Amazon’s global sites. Niu said Haiwaigou now offers 1.6 million items, up from 80,000 when it launched. To speed delivery, she said Amazon moves popular products into its warehouse in the Free-Trade Zone in Shanghai, an area designed to move more quickly through Chinese customs.

For some brands, Niu said, Amazon China is warehousing inventory and facilitating sales on a variety of e-commerce sites in China, not just Amazon.cn. While she didn’t mention which other sites, Amazon recently opened a storefront for selling imported goods on Tmall, the brand-friendly marketplace operated by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., China’s dominant e-commerce company.

Brands taking advantage of the Amazon service include French wine brand Paul Jaboulet Ainé and Iceland skincare brand Bioeffect. “Although those brands know little about the Chinese market, Amazon China, as a retailer, could help them in marketing and offer localized services,” Niu said. “As a result, Paul Jaboulet Ainé sold out its inventory in three days in its opening launch and Bioeffect is growing its sales three times faster than the average on Amazon.cn.”

Niu said Amazon is also making headway in facilitating sales by Chinese companies on its websites around the world through its Global Store project, which launched in 2012. 

Chinese merchants can sell products via Amazon sites in nine overseas markets, including the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Canada, Japan and India. Amazon operates e-commerce sites in 14 countries. Besides these nine and China, the countries are Australia, Brazil, Mexico and the Netherlands.

Amazon maintains an international consulting team to answer questions from Chinese merchants through email, telephone and live chart, and Amazon’s European sites have translated merchant registration pages into Chinese, Niu said.

The Chinese companies are selling well on several of the Amazon sites, she said. “We just opened the Japan market to Chinese merchants, and sales of Chinese merchants in there jumped 500% in 2014,” Niu said. “In the U.S., sales of Chinese merchants last year increased 100%.”

She said some Chinese brands have seen particularly rapid growth in the U.S. through Amazon’s Global Store project. Chinese telecom brand Huawei’s smartphone has become one of the top 10-selling unlocked phones on Amazon.com, and apparel brand K-Boxing is increasing its online sales by 30% every month in the U.S., according to Niu.

Social Media: Invest to Impress?

April 2015 Retail Perceptions Report

Through social media, retailers can personalize marketing messages, nurture customer relationships, engage new potential customers and create a community for their most loyal shoppers. But, is the investment worth it? Does social media presence have any influence on where shoppers spend their money? In the latest Retail Perceptionsreport, Interactions Marketing asked shoppers about their social media connections with retailers and how these connections affect purchase behaviors.

According to original research by Interactions, retailer engagement on social media is quickly becoming an expectation— 77 percent of social media users expect retailers to connect with them online. Additionally, the study also found that 42 percent of shoppers prefer to shop at retailers that engage them on social media.

To learn more ways to leverage social media that can improve the shopper experience, be sure to read this month’s “Opportunities for Retailers and CPGs” section. The research shared at the end of the survey provides valuable information on the ways you can attract new shoppers and ultimately, nurture consumer relationships.

The report is now available for download.  Simply enter your information and you will be emailed the complete report. For more information on Retail Perceptions, contact Kelly Short at kshort@interactionsmarketing.com.

Are Mobile Wallets Going Mainstream at Retail?

In a word, yes, and grocers and shoppers need to be on the same road to adoption

April 28, 2015, 09:32 am By Lance Eliot, Interactions

For years, various pundits have predicted that mobile wallets and the ability to pay with the swipe of a smartphone will be the next big thing in retail. And for nearly just as long, these payment options remained largely a novelty, in some cases even seeming to be more trouble than they were worth. Now their time has finally come, as evidenced by heightened consumer response, and as showcased by retailers that have been able to make mobile wallets work properly. The advent of mainstream mobile wallet solutions that consumers actually want to use — and that retailers can actually synchronize with their systems — has finally arrived, with the potential to become more popular than many retailers might be ready to handle.

According to Interactions' recent "Retail Perceptions" trend report, nearly 30 percent of shoppers are using a mobile wallet — that's nearly one-third! — and 62 percent of those who don't say they expect to start using one within the next year, for nearly a whopping two-thirds of your shoppers. Add to that the fact that all of the major credit card networks in the United States participate in at least one mobile wallet solution, and it's clear that this is a real trend that retailers need to leverage and become engaged in.

The biggest players today are mobile solutions that work with multiple banks, multiple forms of payments and/or multiple retailers. The four popular choices are PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Wallet and Softcard. Apple's release of the Apple Watch has the opportunity to provide a big boost for the use of mobile wallets, as the trendy timepiece is equipped with Apple Pay.

It should be noted, however, that as much as consumers may want a mobile wallet option, the market is a bit unsettled without an already ordained single standard mobile solution, and retailers have been at times hesitant to adopt any such mobile solutions, waiting to see how the disparate options ultimately turn out. Notably, the adoption of mobile payment will require sizeable retailer investment in hardware and software, and some retailers abhor the possibility of making the wrong choice of provider. Those retailers are waiting to see which way things will go.

Cracks in the Dam

While the floodgates might not be fully opened yet, there are widening cracks in the dam, with food retailers around the world starting to provide e-payment options for shoppers. In the United States, grocers ranging from Sprouts Farmers Market to Wegmans Food Markets to Whole Foods Market now accept digital wallets. Further afield, in Zimbabwe, for example, wholesale food distributor National Foods is teaming with Econet Wireless to provide shoppers with the ability to purchase groceries from their smartphones, while in Australia, grocery retail giant Coles has launched a mobile wallet app that combines a payment system with the chain's rewards points.

Beyond grocery, Starbucks, an early adopter of mobile payments, has shown the retail industry the sheer potential of what can happen when you enable shoppers to pay with their phones. The coffee chain’s app enables payment at its stores, and although used only at Starbucks, it nonetheless handles an estimated 6 million to 7 million transactions per week, accounting for nearly 16 percent of the company’s total U.S. sales.

For retailers looking to join the mobile payment revolution, it all comes down to knowing your audience. Ask yourself: Will my existing target market use a mobile wallet tied to a credit card? Will it allow me to target new consumers who otherwise might have sought other retailers? Will consumers be willing to use their checking accounts? Is there an existing mobile payment system they already use and like, which could work for me, too?

As with so many of the changes affecting the industry today, retailers must remember that consumers are in the driver's seat. Gathering insights to deliver a solution that clearly takes consumers' needs and preferences into account is the only way to truly succeed and make sure that they head – mobile wallets in tow – into your stores.

Do Fortune 500 Sites Meet Google's Mobile Standards?

Nearly half of Fortune 500 sites aren't mobile-friendly by Google's standards

Will Google’s mobile algorithm changes hurt Fortune 500 websites’ search results ranking? Many have their work cut out for them, based on Q1 2015 research by Merkle | RKG.

 - See more at: http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1012412#sthash.64kk3VFq.dpuf

The study found that nearly half of Fortune 500 websites were not mobile-friendly according to Google’s standards. Internet Retailer Top 500 websites were in a far better position, likely due to demand from digital consumers for mobile-optimized sites over the past few years. Even Fortune 500 companies that did have Google-approved mobile sites weren’t necessarily following Google’s recommendation to use responsive design; 70% were using m. or distinct mobile URLs.

Google’s new algorithm will likely force Fortune 500 sites to finally get on the mobile optimization train; otherwise, their lack of mobile-friendly requirements will negatively affect their rank in results, RKG noted. Q4 2014 research by AdLift highlighted the importance of ranking highly, as clickthrough rates (CTRs) for US mobile organic search results dropped drastically for those not in the first position. For example, results for branded keywords fell from 46.4% CTR for position one to 10.8% for position two.

Google’s stronger stress on mobile optimization coincides with mobile’s increasing share of traffic on the search engine. RKG found that in Q1 2015, 47% of Google’s North America organic traffic was driven by mobile—up 3 percentage points quarter over quarter and 11 points year over year. Across all engines, search traffic driven by mobile rose 54% in the first quarter of this year, vs. 14% for overall search visits.

For the first time next year, eMarketer estimates, the majority of US consumers will conduct a search on a mobile phone at least once per month, with that figure coming in at 49.0% this year. By 2019, 65.0% of the US population will be mobile phone search users, representing nearly eight in 10 mobile phone users.

Chipotle's Non-GMO Policy Changes Everything

Phil Lempert

Yesterday’s announcement by Chipotle that it start serving food only made with non-GMO ingredients was not a surprise. After all they have built their brand based on a consistent messaging plan that set them apart from their competition by positioning themselves as doing what is best for the land, farmers, animals, and of course their customers.

Chipotle’s The Scarecrow  video has 14+ million views, was picked up by countless media including NPR, ChristianScience Monitor and Slate and been called by marketing reporter Ann Hadley as “the most poignant moment in marketing” and even won an award at Cannes….but according to The New Yorker, Mother Jones and BuzzFeed who recently published the “9 Disappointing Facts About Chipotle” the statements made in the video short are not 100% true.

The restaurant’s announcement fast tracks the anti-GMO and GMO Labeling debates as it brings the issue to the “masses” rather than just having it argued by foodies, intellectuals, pundits and NGOs. Television talk shows have featured the debate with man-on-the-street (or farmers market, to be more precise) interviews as well as one on one “expert” interviews – all underscoring the passion to be fearful of GMOs and reinforcing the lack of basic knowledge about GMOs (or even what the acronym stands for!).

My fear is that this move by Chipotle adds to the confusion and misunderstanding; and does little to help consumers understand the issue and the science.

Marion Nestle, PhD and professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University posted a brief comment on her blog. “No, this is not a safety issue. GMO corn ingredients were not making Chipotle customers sick. Yes, this is a matter of trust. Chipotle customers are offended that GMO foods are not labeled and that they have no choice about whether to eat them”. For the complete post visit Food Politics.

February 27th will go down in history as an important date in GMO history. In addition to Chipotle’s announcement, a federal court dismissed a motion filed by food industry trade groups to prevent the state of Vermont from implementingAct 120 which mandates GMO labeling on all foods beginning in July 2016. According to a report in National Geographic, food industry groups have spent more than $100 million to fund anti-labeling campaigns, no doubt an amount that will rise even higher as they ponder options from this ruling.

A sign supporting Proposition 37 which calls for the mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods is seen in front of a home in Glendale, California October, 19, 2012. California could become the first US state to enforce labeling of genetically modified foodstuffs also know as GMO’s, in a vote next month pitting agro-chemical manufacturing giants against die-hard opponents of so-called ‘frankenfoods.’ The state will vote on November 6 – the same day as the White House election – on the ballot initiative, which backers claim will let consumers know exactly what they are eating, but critics say will pander to unjustified fears about genetic engineering. AFP PHOTO / ROBYN BECK (Photo credit should read ROBYN 

BECK/AFP/Getty Images)

One of the key objections from the industry is that labeling GMO foods will incur significant costs. Chipotle has gone out of its way to say that there will be no price increases as a result of this change.

Some readers of this column may remember Sy Syms, of New York clothing store fame, who coined the slogan “an educated consumer is our best customer” – a lesson we should take heed from as we move into a new era of food: transparency, sustainability, health with science to support the findings for each.

The NPD Group just this morning released their survey that found “over half of U.S. consumers express some level of concern about genetically-modified organisms (GMOs), but when asked to describe GMOs, many consumers are unclear”. Jimmy Kimmel was right!

Chipotle’s move will no doubt attract new customers to the chain’s restaurants and most likely bring in an entirely new customer base, not for the food, but because they align with the chain’s ethical positions. Some will like the food and come back for more.