Memo: On J-Curves and Agglomeration

It was not until Wal-Mart bought Jet.com in 2016 that retail executives began to broadly wake up and embrace e-commerce. Marc Lore was the CEO and founder of Jet.com and an excellent e-commerce executive who had founded diapers.com and soap.com

It took eight years for e-commerce as a share of retail sales in the United States to grow to 12 percent from 5 percent. It took only the 12 weeks between March and June this year to reach 16 percent from 12 percent.

Today, the agglomeration is no longer on physical soil. It is shifting with an extraordinary pace to its digital counterparts: internet communities, social media sites, search engines and membership marketplaces (Amazon Prime, Walmart +). We live in a new, digital country without borders. To think that eCommerce will not become the preeminent form ... See more