This year’s Amazon (AMZN) Prime Day on July 11th set a company sales record, beating out both Black Friday and Cyber Monday. In fact, Prime Day sales were higher than both those shopping days combined in 2016. Prime Day sales, which kicked off 30 hours of deals, were up 60% over last year’s results.
In case you haven't noticed, a massive disruption is occurring on retail. Traditional brick and mortar retailers are struggling not just to compete, but for their very survival. Many retailers have filed for bankruptcy or are on the verge.
Surveying the retail landscape over the last year, it is clear that online retail is rapidly gaining share, while traditional brick-and-mortar retailers continue to struggle.
Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT), the second largest online retailer, is looking to catch up with competitor Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN), which captured 43% of all U.S. online retail sales in 2016. And to do so, it's getting creative in looking to emerging technologies.
It is clearly evident that an increasing number of consumers are opting to shop online from the comfort of their homes and offices. Convenience, more competitive pricing and better selection-not to mention privacy when making discreet purchases-are touted as just a few of the reasons consumers are spending more time clicking online than physically going to stores.
For Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), the enormous success of products like the iPhone and iPad is a tough act to follow. Given that fact, what next technology is Apple CEO Tim Cook the most excited about? The answer is augmented reality, or AR, which overlays images, video, and games over real world experiences.
Fitbit (NYSE:FIT) stock has not had the greatest start to the year. The stock declined 18% in January and now hovers at around $6 per share. Compare that to its IPO price back in June of 2015 of $20 equating to an almost 80% drop in share price.
Despite initial optimism for brick and mortar retail going into the holiday season, Macy's (NYSE:M) and Kohl's (NYSE:KSS) provided investors with fresh evidence that retail is in the midst of a digital disruption and transformation. Traditional brick and mortar retail is suffering and e-commerce is taking a bigger and bigger piece of the retail pie.
Last Friday, December 9th, marked the launch of the WEAR ETF (WEAR), the first exchange-traded fund dedicated to the Wearable Technology segment. This new ETF tracks our EQM Wearables Index.
