Getting in Bed With the Enemy
Amazon Scooped Up Data From Its Own Sellers to Launch Competing Products

Contrary to assertions to Congress, employees often consulted sales information on third-party vendors when developing private-label merchandise

Amazon.com Inc. employees have used data about independent sellers on the company’s platform to develop competing products, a practice at odds with the company’s stated policies.

The online retailing giant has long asserted, including to Congress, that when it makes and sells its own products, it doesn’t use information it collects from the site’s individual third-party sellers - data those sellers view as proprietary. Yet interviews with more than 20 former employees of Amazon’s private-label business and documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal reveal that employees did just that.

Such information can help Amazon decide how to price an item, which features to copy or whether to enter a product segment based on its earning potential, according to people familiar with the practice, including a current employee and some former employees who participated in it.

In one instance, Amazon employees accessed documents and data about a bestselling car-trunk organizer sold by a third-party vendor. The information included total sales, how much the vendor paid Amazon for marketing and shipping, and how much Amazon made on each sale. Amazon’s private-label arm later introduced its own car-trunk organizers.

“Like other retailers, we look at sales and store data to provide our customers with the best possible experience,” Amazon said in a written statement. “However, we strictly prohibit our employees from using nonpublic, seller-specific data to determine which private label products to launch.”

Amazon said employees using such data to inform private-label decisions in the way the Journal described would violate its policies, and that the company has launched an internal investigation. wsj.com

Editor's Note: As reported in the Daily on Feb. 25, Amazon is currently looking to license its checkout-free "Go" technology to other retailers. If competing companies weren't already worried about giving up their proprietary data by "getting in bed with the enemy", they certainly are now after this report.
 

Coronavirus Update: April 24

US: 900K Cases - 51K Dead - 90K Recovered

Worldwide: 2.8M Cases - 194K Dead - 771K Recovered
 

U.S. Law Enforcement Deaths | NYPD Deaths: 31
Private Industry Security Guard Deaths: 63

A Guide to State Coronavirus Lockdowns

Governors in most states have ordered businesses to shut and people to stay home

Most U.S. states have imposed lockdown measures restricting gathering and social contact, disrupting the lives of hundreds of millions of people and the operations of thousands of businesses.

Wall Street Journal has compiled a great stay-by-state guide here, which will be updated as new information becomes available.

Reopening businesses will be harder than shutting them down

Customers will be demanding new safety measures, says disaster recovery expert

Businesses will have to show they have adequate safety measures in place when they reopen during the coronavirus pandemic, according the CEO of a nonprofit that helps businesses with disaster recovery.

“Customers are going to be demanding not just assumptions of safety but visible steps and measures that companies are taking on behalf of their employees and on behalf of their customers,” Chloe Demrovsky, CEO of Disaster Recovery Institute International, told CNBC.

Demrovsky said on “The Exchange” that in general, the types of safety measures implemented by businesses will vary across sector and by size. But all businesses must have a plan, she said.

“Shutting down businesses was difficult. Reactivating them is going to be harder,” she said.

Policies businesses could put in place includes temperature checks at doors, in addition to a continued adherence to social distancing, Demrovsky said.

The changes may be particularly visible in restaurants. She said some may install Plexiglas barriers and switch to disposable eating utensils.

“Even in sectors where we’re not used to seeing it, we’re going to have to see personal protective equipment on all employees,” Demrovsky said, adding that some stores may require that customers also wear masks.

She said retail stores that typically have samples, or testers, for products such as lotion or makeup will most likely have to stop doing so. cnbc.com

Contactless Payments: Healthy COVID-19 Defense

Touch-Free Payment Limit Gets Raised as Pandemic Continues

Public Health Mandate: Touch as Little as Possible
Now, using contactless feels better in a time when public health officials are telling us to touch as little as possible and to thoroughly wash our hands on a regular basis to help cut down on the transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Indeed, the industry has accelerated its plan to raise the top amount that you can charge, in any given contactless transaction, due to the outbreak.

Last year, Visa estimated that more than two-thirds of face-to-face transactions in Europe occurred using contactless payments, while in Canada and the U.K., the usage figure is about 60 percent.

In the U.S., however, contactless card transactions remain rare, with CNBC reporting last year that only about 3 percent of U.S. cards even have this capability, regardless of whether POS systems can read them.

Will we ever touch money the same way again? govinfosecurity.com

What the C's Are Reading
Food Retailing and Our New Fate
When it comes to retailing, maybe the most unexpected surprise is that food retailing is just about the only enterprise that remains more or less as it was in the B.C. era (Before Corona).

Consumers can still go to supermarkets and other food-retailing venues in person to shop for the goods they need, if they accept the degree of hazard associated with that. They can also order product online. And sales at the major retailers selling food are surging, in a good way. But that doesn’t mean everything is exactly the same for food retailing and that in a surprising turn of coronavirus events, the future of food retailing looks great. That being said, there are several concerns to consider now:

Up to about this point, we’ve seen store overcrowding and product shortages, almost all of which was the result of demand-side imbalances. Now, there are signs that supply-side shortages are in the making, which would be exceedingly more difficult to resolve. Then there’s the delivery aspect of food retailing. It’s intuitive to assume that delivery services are very well positioned now, and will be into the future, but is that the case? And what are the worker conditions during this crisis that could affect deliveries?

And what’s the human dimension to all these considerations, including owners, workers and customers?

Demand-Side Troubles | Supply-Side Hazards | Online Ordering | The Human Dimension therobinreport.com

With 100,000 stores set to close by 2025,
Mall owners face their next legal hurdle: Co-tenancy clauses
Mall and shopping center owners are likely going to be hearing from tenants that are pulling out of leases with co-tenancy clauses, as department stores and other anchor tenants shut for good.

Here’s how co-tenancy clauses work, on a basic level: They are typically built into the leases of the specialty tenants, like a Gap or an AT&T store, in the middle of a mall, or the shops situated along a grocery-anchored shopping centers, like a Big Lots or a TJ Maxx.

The clauses will say something along the lines of: If less than 80% of space is occupied at this property at any given time, or if a major, anchor tenant like a department store or a grocery store goes dark here, the tenant is allowed a break in rent. Or the tenant is given the ability to terminate a lease early. The clauses are meant to protect tenants when circumstances happen that are outside of their control. cnbc.com

Hudson Yards owner says workers must return to offices
before malls can reopen in post-coronavirus world
People need to get back to work — and will likely spend weeks in the office — before they get back in the mall, according to the owner of Hudson Yards in New York.

“My guess is we go back to offices first,” Related Companies CEO Jeff Blau told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin on Tuesday. “I think retail is going to be a second step. I think retail is going to be much slower to come back. Just because people go to their offices, I don’t think they are going to rush out to congregate in restaurants.” cnbc.com

Three Hours Longer, the Pandemic Workday Has Obliterated Work-Life Balance

People are overworked, stressed, and eager to get back to the office

An executive at JPMorgan Chase & Co. gets unapologetic messages from colleagues on nights and weekends, including a notably demanding one on Easter Sunday. A web designer whose bedroom doubles as an office has to set an alarm to remind himself to eat during his non-stop workday. At Intel Corp., a vice president with four kids logs 13-hour days while attempting to juggle her parenting duties and her job.

Six weeks into a nationwide work-from-home experiment with no end in sight, whatever boundaries remained between work and life have almost entirely disappeared.

With many living a few steps from their offices, America’s always-on work culture has reached new heights. The 9-to-5 workday, or any semblance of it, seems like a relic of a bygone era. Long gone are the regretful formalities for calling or emailing at inappropriate times. Burnt-out employees feel like they have even less free time than when they wasted hours commuting.

In the U.S., homebound employees are logging three hours more per day on the job than before city and state-wide lockdowns, according to data from NordVPN, which tracks when users connect and disconnect from its service. bloomberg.com

Survey Finds that Safety Takes Priority in Workplace Training
To minimize the occurrence of physical and digital harm in the workplace, 90 percent of organizations are training employees on safety procedures, including compliance training and programs on other topics.

Of those, 95 percent provide training for employee safety, 96 percent for workplace safety, 48 percent for customer safety, and 84 percent for digital and information safety, according to the Association for Talent Development research report Safety Training: Protecting Employees and Organizations.

More organizations provided safety training to employees during on-boarding than at any other time (92 percent). Substantial majorities also covered safety on a regular schedule for refresher training (82 percent), in response to new government regulations (73 percent), or due to safety incidents (72 percent). securitymagazine.com

LAPD Announces It Is Dropping Its Predictive Policing Tool Due to Coronavirus
The Los Angeles Police Department announced today it would be ending its use of PredPol’s predictive policing tool — which the company claims uses artificial intelligence to predict crime, but which critics have called "fundamentally flawed."

An LAPD memo dated April 15 quoted Police Chief Michel R. Moore saying that the police department would stop using the software, effective immediately, not because of concerns that activists have raised but because of financial constraints due to COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. buzzfeednews.com

'The Digital Guard': Remote Security Guarding During The Pandemic
As many local and federal government entities use systems complete with facial recognition and infrared technology to support first responders in preventing crime, the private sector typically relies on staffed security guards to protect assets. As the pandemic continues to require citizens to shelter in place, the availability and affordability of security guards decreases, leaving many businesses vulnerable to criminal activity.

Can Remote Guarding offer greater protection against thieves, vagrants, trespassers and active shooters? The Digital Guard is the bridge between the law enforcement community and the public. When an intruder activates a camera system on a prospective site, security agents in a secured command center will view and monitor the intruder’s activity. And advanced Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning algorithm alerts the security agents who can then communicate with the intruder via a strategically positioned speaker system on site and alert law enforcement of a crime in progress. einnews.com

Essential Retail Jobs Draw a Crowd
Grocery clerks, warehouse employees and delivery workers are keeping America running during the pandemic. Between early and late March, applications for fast-growing "essential retail" jobs surged 88% nationally, and more than 100% in places like Sacramento, Nashville, and Miami.

That's according to new analysis of LinkedIn data, which sheds light on labor and hiring trends in this field. Nearly a quarter of the applicants came from the retail, restaurant, hospitality and food/beverage industries, which have been hit hard by shelter-in-place rules.

For more insights, see the LinkedIn report here: Hiring in a pandemic: lessons from the rise of 'essential retail'​

Grocery store pays it forward for first responders and health care workers

Front-line workers at Southeastern Grocers help others who put themselves at risk to assist those suffering from the coronavirus.

House Approves $484 Billion Bill to Aid Small Businesses, Hospitals

Jobless claims jump another 4.4 million - 26 million Americans have lost their jobs to coronavirus

Neiman Marcus eyes Sunday bankruptcy filing, $600 million emergency funding

J.C. Penney in Advanced Talks for Bankruptcy Financing

Retailers exposed: Who’s paying rent and who’s not

NYC: City Council grocery clerk bonus bill could bankrupt supermarkets

Meatpacking union says 25% of US pork production hit by coronavirus closures

1 in 5 New Yorkers May Have Had Covid-19, Antibody Tests Suggest

Ruth's Chris To Repay $20 Million In Small Business Loans After 200,000 Sign Online Petition

Bangladeshi garment workers face ruin as global brands ditch clothing contracts amid pandemic

Germany reopens retail stores but shoppers stay home

On-Demand Webinar from Sensormatic & Loss Prevention Foundation:
How Supply Chain Continues to Evolve to Meet Customer Demand