Similarly, BrandlessвЂ™ model also allows shoppers to skip the big box retailer or e-commerce grocer. ItвЂ™s likely a unique enough experience that people share it with their friends, or at least ask their opinion on frames. By cutting out the middleman, the company is able to lower its prices without royalties and offer customers an intimate shopping experience from their living room. Building relationships directly with consumers вЂ“ Warby Parker gives every customer a boutique shopping experience.Brandless is then able to sell most things at a lower price, eliminating what they call the вЂњbrand taxвЂќ and giving every product a $3 or less price tag. (and you better believe those attributes are rooted in customer data). By eliminating traditional branding, the packaging illuminates only what the core customer finds important вЂ“ organic, non-GMO, vegan, etc.

The retailer has given distributors a user-friendly platform to sell their products, leaving distributors the opportunity to do what they do best: compete on price and availability.Д«randless is democratizing retail in a different way вЂ“ stripping packaged goods down to their core, and focusing on attributes of the products over branding. No one knows who they last purchased from through Amazon. Creating a retail democracy вЂ“ Amazon did something powerful for retailers and distributors вЂ“ in a brand and label-obsessed market, it democratized the selling of goods for distributors.Like Boxed and Warby Parker, these three innovators show us a lot about what matters in the future of retail. Brandless sells more than 300 food, clean beauty, non-toxic cleaning, household and office goods. Then thereвЂ™s Brandless, a smaller retailer that secured $50 million in funding last year. Warby Parker is now a household name and worth $1.75 billion- proving the quickly won value of disrupting the retail experience. The company offers quick delivery, lower costs and on-trend products. Warby Parker, the eyeglass company that evolved a dated shopping experience, has also disrupted a category that has seen little innovation over the past few decades. The business is successfully taking market share away from brick-and-mortarВ retailers partly because of its easy-to-navigate customer experience and also its use of advanced technology and machine learning to improve internal operations. Boxed started in a garage, and today its valued at more than half a billion dollars. One such startup is Boxed, an e-commerce business that offers bulk items at wholesale prices without a membership fee, and delivers goods in less than three days. I see these emerging powers in both big and small upstarts and startups. Businesses will break through by creating a customer experience that does not exist today. Innovation that disrupts the market will come from a business that is able to harness the power of advanced analytics, new supply chain models and artificial intelligence.

Threat of new entrants grocery industry