Reading
across disciplines is one of the best ways to improve our investment acumen.
Here is a summary of some of the best articles I read this week.
Retailers are fighting back
online returns
Some in the industry
that created the monster are trying to put it back in its cage. They’re taking
baby steps—not providing pre-paid mailing labels, requiring a receipt unless an
unwanted item is carried to a store—but also threatening to cut off serial
returners, the most troublesome of the offenders. Among the others: people who
wait months (or more) before returning and the so-called wardrobers, who wear
articles of clothing and then ship them back.
Reverse logistics —
the transport from buyers to sellers — is not only costly on its own but
creates a need for lots of room for storage. Return stock is thrown into an
empty space in a warehouse to pile up until someone can get to it.
And fintech startups are
getting into the space to facilitate returns
Consulting firm
Newmine launched its Chief Returns Officer product. Newmine says that it
processes data from multiple sources and uses “data science and AI principles”
to determine the cause of returns in near real time. Retailers using the
service receive actionable recommendations for resolving problems during the
selling season.
Supply.ai’s ReturnSense is a returns prevention platform that
learns customer behavior, detects the likelihood of returns, alerts the
retailer and intervenes in the purchase process to mediate with customers about
their product choices. The firm says its algorithm draws from over 1,000 data
variables to predict which orders are likely to be returned. The company says
that its service prevents returns and makes shoppers feel more confident in
their purchase choices.
Other technology
providers include Returnly, a fintech platform that turns product returns into
repurchases by enabling customers to buy again with instant exchanges and
refunds, before they have even returned their items. Appriss Retail’s Verify
service is a consumer-based returns authorization system that uses predictive
algorithms and statistical models to distinguish those engaged in fraudulent
and abusive behavior and deny them the ability to make returns.
A real-life thriller in the
making - the escape of Carlos Ghosn
One of the country’s
most famous criminal suspects had slipped past the cameras trained on his
house, past the police and border guards and the Japanese citizens who for the
past year have followed his every move.
Carlos Ghosn, the
deposed chief of the Nissan and Renault auto empire facing charges of financial
wrongdoing, had fled to Lebanon, and no one in Japan — not the authorities, the
media or even the auto executive’s own lawyer — could explain how it had happened.
It was a cinematic
escape, carried out just before New Year’s Day, Japan’s most important holiday,
when government agencies and most businesses close for as long as a week.
The search for a distraction
free environment goes back centuries!
Medieval monks had a
terrible time concentrating. And concentration was their lifelong work! Their
tech was obviously different from ours. But their anxiety about distraction was
not. They complained about being overloaded with information, and about how,
even once you finally settled on something to read, it was easy to get bored
and turn to something else. They were frustrated by their desire to stare out
of the window, or to constantly check on the time (in their case, with the Sun
as their clock), or to think about food or sex when they were supposed to be
thinking about God.
Understanding the US-Iran
conflict through the lens of history
From the
CIA-orchestrated overthrow of Iran's prime minister in 1953, to tension and
confrontation under President Trump, a look back over more than 65 years of
tricky relations between Iran and the US.
