Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

The good news is that major companies are now actively pushing mobile. The bad news is that they're pushing in different directions. The mobile phone e-commerce activities you're seeing today are going to fall victim to the same amnesia fog that envelopes all of those early Web searches done on text-based browsers.

Although the Web had been around for years, it was the graphical browser that got the industry to agree on one way to create Web pages that could fire the imagination of businesses and consumers. That defining moment has yet to hit mobile commerce. Forget design and programming issues. There hasn't yet even been broad agreement on how m-commerce is supposed to work. Let's start with simple payment.

In Sunday's New York Times, there's this intriguing piece talking about how E-Commerce sales are quickly running out of steam. Perhaps "intriguing" is the wrong word for it. A more apt term might be "dangerous" or "out-of-context" or ..... nah, I think I'll stick with "dangerous."

The piece is not dangerous because it reveals some deep, dark secret. It doesn't, not does it claim to. It's dangerous because it perpetuates the misguided—but commonly held—belief that online and offline retail efforts today are distinct. Even worse, it seems oblivious to the rapidly-increasing influence that each has on the other.

The story is built on stats showing a sharp decline in online sales. But those statistical issues are not the key problem with the Times story. The problem is that it still sees online and brick-and-mortar as rivals. The reality is that we are just starting the age of the merged channel.

While working the NRF show this week, a theme that emerged in almost every conversation was the online/offline struggle and I usually asked how much of that CIO's chain's revenue was virtual as opposed to physical.

That's where one particular CIO—who put his own chain's online revenue significantly south of the industry standard of about 5-6 percent—offered a wonderful insight. When asked what the percent would likely be when his company would take online-offline integration seriously, he said, "The day that neither myself nor my CFO has a clue what the percent breakdowns are, that will be the day we've got it right. As long as my numbers are sufficiently segregated that I can easily identify what's online and what isn't, we'll still have a long way to go."Read more...

The fact that shoplifters nabbed $1.5 million across 19 states is not a technology, people or training problem. Rather, it shows that management needs to re-evaluate its obsession with keeping the line moving. The most well-planned and meticulously detailed crimes are often foiled by the commonplace. The thieves might map out their route precisely, coordinating it based on when various employees come and go. But security guard No. 9 gets a flat tire that morning, shows up 35 minutes late and ruins everything. Read more...

Linux penetration into retail isn't nearly as significant as commonly believed, according to a study from industry analyst firm Venture Development Corp. (VDC). "There's a lot of talk, a lot of news around Linux and a lot of hype," said Mike Liard, senior analyst at VDC and a co-author of the report. Read more...