The Wall Street Journal received anonymous information that the bankrupt retailer Toys “R” Us has rejected an $890 million bid for some of its US stores and locations in Canada from the CEO of Bratz doll maker MGA Entertainment Inc. Apparently the liquidators expect to raise more from the failed retailer’s assets.

Inside Retail published an article written by Retail Directions, which dispels the myths surrounding ‘Artificial Intelligence’ and its purported massive impact on retail in the future.   We have stressed the point that technologies which have been available for quite a few years are now promoted as revolutionary, mainly because they have been combined with voice recognition, voice synthesisers, and made mobile.  This means that we now have access to increasingly smarter animated matter, but it has NO intelligence – it just gives the appearance of intelligence.  This realisation redefines the expectations we should have about the likely future of ‘AI’ in retail.

The Australian published an advertisement, which we found quite surprising.  Not because of its apologetic tone and acknowledgment of the $4.5 million fine imposed by ACCC.  It was the numbers which we were able to distill from the ad - it looks like Thermomix Australia turns over around $90 million per year.  Hardly the mother-and-daughter business it claims to be in the ad.  It proves that there is a third way to success in retail - it doesn't have to be online or bricks and mortar - "Tupperware" parties remain very effective.

The AFR commented about Afterpay's share price drop - the business lost 30% of its market value since its March high, due to concerns about approaching market saturation - it now has 1.8 million customers.  We found other statistics mentioned by the AFR quite fascinating: 25% of all online apparel transactions in Australia are paid for via Afterpay, which translates into 8% of total online retail.  Given that a solid portion of new sales are brought in by Afterpay, we can understand why retailers accept their relatively high merchant fees.

CNBC published an article about The Gap, mentioning a 24% increase in share value over the last 12 months and recently announced earnings in excess of market expectations.  The Gap's CEO was quoted, saying "We know a lot about our customers. We can see their lifetime value.  Structurally, because we have multiple brands and multi-channels, we've got something not a lot of other apparel companies have."  The Gap owns brands such as Old Navy, Banana Republic, and Athleta.  What we found particularly interesting was the CEO's comment that "the difference between a customer who's casually engaged and one who is really deeply engaged in our brands across channels, it's at least 10 times the value of that [first] customer."

In their article about The Gap CNBC mentioned Athleta, the company's sportswear brand, which has grown to 140 stores from only selling online.  "Most retail came from physical and went online. Athleta came from online and catalog and is going physical. And we're very focused on making sure that we're building the retailer of the future,"  said The Gap's CEO.  Athleta's business is now half online and half brick and mortar, with plans to expand its physical store base.  Clearly, claims that online will replace traditional brick and mortar stores are not valid.

According to Reuters, Toys 'R' Us has received multiple bids of more than U$1 billion for an 85 percent stake in its Asian business as the bankrupt company moves ahead with plans to sell some non-US operations.  Apparently, there is also serious interest to purchase its Central European operations.  In the meantime, the US and UK operations are being liquidated.  Running a big business has its challenges, but shutting it down is not an easy task either.