As the world continues to move online, how we shop for our groceries also is changing. 

Already two years ago, online grocery shopping studies found that one-third of primary grocery shoppers had bought groceries online within the past year, and that this trend was extending across all age groups. Brick Meets Click, a retail consultancy, surveyed U.S. consumers and reported that 1 in 5 of these shoppers was now an active user of online grocery services, and that these shoppers spend an average of 16 percent of their weekly grocery dollars online.  

Then in 2017, Amazon bought Whole Foods Market, stepping into the brick and mortar side of the grocery business.

It was a clear message to traditional grocers that if they were not already in an online, multichannel environment, they had to find a way to enter that world—because that’s where their shoppers were going. 

“There is now an unprecedented amount of competition in the food industry to where it has become a virtual food fight,” says Jim Tompkins, a supply chain and strategy expert and CEO of Tompkins International and Monarch FX. “You have restaurants and department stores like Target and Walmart getting into the grocery business to the point where the lines are now blurred as to where you can get your groceries. Brand loyalty is not what it used to be. For traditional grocers, they are now in a new business environment. The challenges for them are in knowing how to position themselves to succeed in this environment. Do they lower prices? Or offer higher quality? They have to figure out what it is that will get people in the doors.” 

One of the ways retailers do get people in the doors is flexibility in options. In other words, if an individual wants to order a grocery item online and then pick it up later at a store, they should be able to do that. If they want home delivery, it is nice to know that the option is there. For others, brick and mortar presence still is a major part of their food shopping experience. Together, these consumer wants add up to a need to address grocery sales and services through multiple channels.

“In the way that the smartphone industry took off after a few rough starts, I expect the home grocery delivery and pick up in store market to eventually achieve widespread success,” says Eric Lamphier, senior director of Product Management at Manhattan Associates. “Retail grocers and food companies are trying to adapt to a world where more and more purchases are completed online versus in person. Grocery stores are one of the last retailers to really embrace the e-commerce wave. It’s the remaining shopping necessity that requires people to venture out of their homes.” 

Lamphier adds that while the technology to enact grocery delivery already exists in terms of integrated order management, warehouse and transportation, and the ability to provide visibility into inventory and distribution channels, the path to profitable execution is not 100 percent guaranteed.

“Questions remain about whether stores will have enough online orders to justify the investment into delivery vehicles, temperature maintaining vessels and staffing for delivery,” he says, adding, “The bottom line is that brick and mortar grocery stores will need to transform themselves from strictly in-store strategies to omnichannel locations.”  

Transitioning to a Multichannel Grocery Environment

The problem is: grocers aren’t known for having an amazing online and in-app experience, because they haven’t needed it in the past. Instead, they’ve been focused on pristine in-store displays and fully organized and stocked shelves. All of this makes developing infrastructure and strategies to meet the needs of today’s online consumer a challenge.

“A major impact will involve labor considerations, as this transformation increases the need for employees to focus on fulfillment, as well as shifting schedule demands that weren’t part of the equation before omni-channel grocery was an option,” says Lamphier. “Once the grocery store also functions as a warehouse, it has to be able to answers questions like: ‘How do you forecast the demand for shoppers who want the best of both worlds—the luxury of delivery sometimes, as well as the occasional in-store experience?’” 

Jim Tompkins agrees that there are challenges ahead for grocers because of the experiential differences between online and in-store shopping for groceries. 

“Being able to offer everything online that you offer in a physical store is impossible to do in an industry like groceries,” says Tompkins. 

For example, you have different categories of goods, he notes. There are the restockable types, like paper towels, soap or cereal, that can be treated and sold the same online as they are in-store. But then there are the unique pantry items that are not standard and restockable, like a customized birthday cake or a try and buy cheese center, where the salesperson assists customers in matching their cheese with their wine. There also are refrigerated and fresh items. For instance, many customers want to be able to choose their own fresh salmon from the display case; they do not want someone to do it for them.

 Tompkins believes that grocers are better off if they think of the task ahead as a “unichannel” instead of an “omnichannel” approach. 

“When I think of omnichannel, I’m thinking that omnichannel is something that a retailer does,” he says. “For the grocery industry, I prefer instead to use the term “unichannel,” because what grocers want to do is make all of their channels perform as one in the eyes of their customers. To do that, customers have to have the same experience, whether they order online or visit a physical store.” 

Of course, the experience isn't going to be uniform for the consumer in every respect. It’s likely they will still prefer to pick out their fresh salmon personally—but what Tompkins and Lamphier are referring to is the ability of grocers to align as many common business processes to both the online and the in-store shopping experience as possible, so that shoppers experience consistency across both channels. 

“When grocers move to an environment where they must address multiple channels of sales, they have to adapt their business processes and systems to support the strategy,” adds Tompkins. “This is why it is important to identify business processes that are common to each channel. The areas that usually are common include sales, procurement, warehousing and distribution, and the overall workflow of the supply chain.”

In many cases, especially for perishable items, e-commerce grocery will likely still mean fulfillment (pick up) at local grocery stores, but grocers will need to adapt their distribution channels to handle both in-store and online consumption without impacting the in-store experience.

“Omni-channel grocery affects the buying process and strategy for how to replenish and replace products in both distribution centers and stores,” says Lamphier. “If you’re trying to create a model for online orders, adjustments will need to be made to the quantities of items that are anticipated to be purchased online versus in store, as well as to the timing of those purchases.” 

Clearly, there is pain involved in getting to this new multichannel approach for traditional grocers, but as online giants like Amazon move into the brick and mortar world, historically brick and mortar operations have to adjust to online sales as well if they are to remain viable.

Nowhere are these growth pains likely to be felt more keenly than in the supply chain. 

“There’s work to do, with plenty of opportunity for development and innovation,” says Lamphier. “Retailers are well-positioned to handle the planning aspects through transportation and warehousing, but the biggest hurdles will be around the in-store execution of the order. For example, how do you know that the inventory is there? How do you route it to the right store? How do you pick it, and do you complete the process via pick-up in store or home delivery? We are at a tipping point for adapting existing inventory and supply chain technology to fully capitalize on these market opportunities.”

Although warehouse operations, which already deliver to physical stores, might not change significantly if a grocer decides to use a pick-up in-store model for online orders, there is impact to systems, such as Point of Sale (POS), and other store services. Lamphier explains that one example of this is when the customer comes into the store. How is the store is going to handle that? 

“For instance, do they order online and have the purchase delivered straight to their vehicle in the store parking lot? The grocer has to determine how the process works,” he adds. 

The challenges of managing perishable foods must also be addressed

 “Because we’re talking about perishable food, we know that home delivery is going to be very difficult,” says Lamphier. “The food delivery vehicle needs to be the size of a parcel delivery truck or smaller and include cleanliness and safety inspection. Retailers will need to create the correct temperature zones for the respective types of foods, and implement software optimization for delivery routes and pickup/drop-off. There’s a lot to the process, and until someone really knocks that out of the park, it’s going to be a hurdle for grocers to overcome.” 

The catch here is: it may not be as large a challenge for logistics and distribution strongholds like Amazon, which larger grocery chains will find themselves competing against. 

“In the end, the challenge for the food supply chain in a multichannel environment is all about velocity,” says Tompkins. “In other words, can the goods be sourced from origin to destination and ultimately to the customer to meet the customer’s expectations? And how can you guarantee the freshness of goods, especially if they are perishable?” 

Many large grocery chains have profit margins that average between one and two percent, so there is not much room for error, as grocers work to open multichannel shopping environments. 

“Consumers have grown increasingly fickle by having become empowered by social media, online search and other tools that let them compare companies and products and communicate their experiences and opinions to others,” reports Alix Partners, a corporate turnaround consultancy. “The historical model of one-way mass-market communication is giving way to two-way dialogue and relationship building…Because of all of those forces, CP companies, especially the larger ones, have had difficulty in growing their top lines during the past four years. In fact, revenue peaked in 2013.” 

This likely means that large grocery chains will need to compete against new forces, like Amazon-Whole Foods, by relying on the knowledge and skills of internal staff, which may not include comprehensive knowledge and skills bases for competing in online environments or for adapting business processes to  multichannel engagement with consumers. 

“The real issue here is not ‘bricks and clicks,’ but ‘bricks and cliques,’” says Tompkins. “Amazon, an e-commerce presence, now buys Whole Foods so it can give its clique of buyers ‘bricks.’ But if you’re a traditional grocery store chain and must now compete with a large online presence with formidable warehousing and logistic capabilities, you might be asking yourself how you will be able to compete with that mode…In China, Ali Baba grocery stores enable you to choose your fresh lobster, which they will cook for you in the store while you shop. Models like this are what traditional grocers are competing against. Ninety percent of these stores look like they did 35 years ago, and now they find that in addition to adapting to a multichannel approach, they must cut prices as well. It’s a difficult challenge.” 

Although the road to multichannel grocery shopping may be difficult, large grocery chains still have their brands, their followings and the good will they have cultivated through the years. It’s a foundation that can be built on. 

“The key is to know who you are and to do it really well,” says Tompkins. “Some grocers focus on shiny apples in well-appointed displays. Others want to show a farm-to-shelf approach, with the dirt still on the apples. Grocers need to be asking themselves these questions about identity. Do you want a coffee shop in the store? Do you want to have private level goods? Do you want to offer in-store samples of food? What are the demographics of the customers that you are targeting to serve?” 

At the same time, retail grocers need to assess their own ability to deliver on an e-commerce order, and truthfully evaluate how they can best deliver the goods. 

“A fundamental question that retail grocers need to be asking themselves is whether they have a website and/or app that allows a customer to place an online order,” adds Lamphier. “Success will depend on whether or not they have a convenient, responsive customer experience that is well connected to their in-store inventory positions. Then, they need to determine how online orders will be routed to the appropriate stores? They also need to assure themselves and their customers of a high level of confidence in store inventory levels.” 

Tompkins adds: “In the outbound side of the supply chain, grocers have to run their supply chains based on demand, whether that demand is from online or in-store sales. For example, if you know that you only sell five items of something daily, why keep 24 items stocked on the shelf?” 

The Amazon Whole Foods purchase was a wakeup call that shook up traditional grocery chains, because it transformed having a multichannel grocer consumer experience from an option to an absolute competitive requirement.

In pursuing a multichannel strategy, grocers should take away one lesson from Amazon, which filled its brick and mortar “hole” by making the Whole Foods acquisition.

Large grocers with an established brick and mortar presence must do the reverse; they must fill the online shopping gap in their own consumer fulfillment strategies.

“Companies will to have reconfigure their business models in innovative ways, such as by deploying direct-to-consumer distribution and making savvier use of digital channels in their marketing and product distribution strategies,” says Alix Partners. “And they’ll have to make their supply chains more efficient than ever while also—and even more important—becoming nimble enough to satisfy consumers more swiftly and effectively than ever.”

The device consists of three tiny molded channels through which cells flow and can be cultivated for at least three weeks in culture. Cell survival in existing microfluidic systems is measured on the order of days, preventing observations of cancer cell change with time.

In the new system, cells appear as a thin milky line in a chamber that’s smaller than a pillbox. They are actually suspended in three dimensions, unlike typical fluidic devices that capture cells in two dimensions. Researchers can feed cancer cells into the device with very minimal disturbance or change to the cells.

Cells are fed into one channel while fluid flows through a parallel channel to provide pressure and flow without disturbing the culture. The flow of fluid through the outer channel mimics what happens with the body’s capillaries. In testing two lines of metastatic prostate cancer cells, researchers successfully isolated leader cells that induce metastasis.

After two weeks, cells from one line were observed to be twice as invasive as the other cell line. That difference disappeared by three weeks, suggesting that the invasive potential of cells may change over time.

By determining differences in the molecular signature between cells that invade and those that don’t, researchers could target the molecular underpinning with therapies to prevent cancer from invading—essentially keeping the cancer confined and preventing metastasis.

The microfluidic device will next be used to analyze triple-negative breast cancer, a particularly aggressive form of the disease. Once the leader cells are identified, the team will begin looking at whether these cells have different genetic or molecular markers than the less-aggressive cells.

China's industry ministry is developing a timetable to end production and sale of traditional fuel cars and will promote development of electric technology, state media on Sunday cited a Cabinet official as saying.

The reports gave no possible target date, but Beijing is stepping up pressure on automakers to accelerate development of electrics.

China is the biggest auto market by number of vehicles sold, giving any policy changes outsize importance for the global industry.

A deputy industry minister, Xin Guobin, said at an auto industry forum on Saturday his ministry has begun "research on formulating a timetable to stop production and sales of traditional energy vehicles," according to the Xinhua News Agency and the Communist Party newspaper People's Daily.

France and Britain announced in July they will stop sales of gasoline and diesel automobiles by 2040 as part of efforts to reduce pollution and carbon emissions that contribute to global warming.

Communist leaders also want to curb China's growing appetite for imported oil and see electric cars as a promising industry in which their country can take an early lead.

China passed the United States last year as the biggest electric car market. Sales of electrics and gasoline-electric hybrids rose 50 percent over 2015 to 336,000 vehicles, or 40 percent of global demand. U.S. sales totaled 159,620.

The reports of Xin's comments in the eastern city of Tianjin gave no other details about electric car policy but cited him as saying Beijing plans to "elevate new energy vehicles to a new strategic level."

Beijing has supported electric development with billions of dollars in research subsidies and incentives to buyers, but is switching to a quota system that will shift the financial burden to automakers.

Under the proposed quotas, electric and hybrid gasoline-electric vehicles would have to make up 8 percent of each automaker's output next year, 10 percent in 2019 and 12 percent in 2020. Automakers that fail to meet their target could buy credits from competitors that have a surplus.

Beijing has ordered state-owned Chinese power companies to speed up installation of charging stations to increase the appeal of electrics.

Chinese automaker BYD Auto, a unit of battery maker BYD Ltd., is the world's biggest electric vehicle maker by number of units sold. It sells gasoline-electric hybrid sedans and SUVs in China and markets all-electric taxis and buses in the United States, Europe and Latin America as well as in China.

Volvo Cars, owned by China's Geely Holding Group, announced plans this year to make electric cars in China for global sale starting in 2019.

General Motors Co., Volkswagen AG and Nissan Motor Co. and others have announced they are launching or looking at joint ventures with Chinese partners to develop and manufacture electric vehicles in China.

Joe Ciardiello: Spaghetti Journal

Illustrator Joe Ciardiello has revered the Old West ever since he was a kid.

He grew up in a land where big-screen cowboys once galloped into the sunset – Staten Island.  

No, really!

More than a century ago, when motion picture cameras first started rolling, many Westerns were filmed at Fred Scott’s Movie Ranch in South Beach, a Staten Island, NY, town just a short stagecoach ride from Ciardiello’s boyhood home. Add to that historic proximity a teenage-boyhood during which Ciardiello was enthralled by the epic spaghetti western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and it’s no wonder that a story from his Italian immigrant grandfather would set alight his imagination.

Joe Ciardiello: Spaghetti Journal – a collection of Ciardiello’s western-themed illustrations premiering at the Hunterdon Art Museum on Sunday, Sept. 17 – was inspired by his grandfather’s recollection of seeing Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show in Italy.  

The subject matter is primarily personality driven, featuring expressive portraits or caricatures of, say, Buffalo Bill (William Cody, who passed away a century ago) and the Lone Ranger. But it’s the inclusion of others like Emilio Salgari (the grandfather of the Spaghetti Western) and director Sergio Leone (whose films like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly were shot in Italy and reinvented the western genre) that link the myths of the American West firmly to Italian popular culture. 

“This collection of drawings represents my effort to knit these influences together in a kind of visual journal,” Ciardiello noted.

To create a number of the illustrations, Ciardiello viewed his already well-worn copies of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly multiple times, making screen captures when a particular image caught his eye.

“Seeing Leone’s The Good, The Bad and The Ugly when it was first released in the U.S. had a profound effect on me as a 14 year old,” Ciardiello noted. “It remains one of my all-time favorite films. Now, 50 years later, it seems somehow fitting to reflect on the connections between my ethnic heritage and the uniquely American mythology of the old west.”

Joe Ciardiello: Spaghetti Journal, opens Sunday, Sept. 17 with a reception from 2-4 p.m., and everyone is welcome. The exhibition, which features 22 illustrations of pen, ink and watercolor, runs through Jan. 7, 2018. Ciardiello plans to complete more than 60 illustrations for the Spaghetti Journal Project, which he aims to have published as a book.

Ciardiello, who now lives in Hunterdon County, has worked for many major magazines and newspapers, as well as a variety of corporate and advertising clients, book publishers and record companies. He received multiple silver medals from the Society of Illustrators, and was honored with its prestigious Hamilton King Award in 2016.

Ciardiello illustrated Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing, which was released in 2007, and his portraits of blues musicians, Black White & Blues, was published six years ago by Strike Three Press.

Anselm Kiefer Transition from Cool to Warm 

Employing broad-ranging and erudite literary sources, from the Old and New Testaments to the poetry of Paul Celan, Kiefer’s oeuvre makes palpable the movement and destruction of human life and, at the same time, the persistence of the delicate, lyrical, or divine.

Central to the exhibition are more than forty unique artists’s books, their pages painted with gesso to mimic marble, displayed in an installation of glass vitrines. Erotically charged female nudes and faces emerge from the pages. Artists’s books are an integral part of Kiefer’s oeuvre; over time they have ranged in scale from the intimate to the monumental, and in materials, from lead to dried plant matter. In this selection of books, the sequences of narrative information and visual effect evoke the fragile endurance of the sacred and the spiritual through the female figures on the marbled pages. They are a reminder perhaps of the sculptures of Auguste Rodin, and even of Michelangelo’s belief that his figures were “freed” from the stone with which he worked.

The large array of new watercolors in this exhibition marks a significant return in Kiefer's work to the elusive and sensuous medium. The exhibition’s title, “Transition from Cool to Warm,” refers to a celebrated book of watercolors that he produced from 1974 to 1977, in which cool, blue marine land and seascapes transform into warm female nudes. Kiefer's fascination for eidetic process, rather than teleological outcome is underscored by the alchemical effects he achieves in these new works—aleatory, and as luminescent as the natural forms they evoke.

The watercolors and books are complemented by romantic landscape paintings, in which lakes can be glimpsed through screens of trees or where surfaces of splashed molten lead peel back to reveal the sea or landscape depicted beneath.

“Transition from Cool to Warm” is accompanied by a fully illustrated publication with essays by Karl Ove Knausgaard and James Lawrence, and an interview with Kiefer by Louisa Buck.

Anselm Kiefer was born in 1945 in Donaueschingen, Germany, and lives and works in France. His work is collected by museums worldwide. Recent institutional exhibitions include Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark (2010); “Shevirat Hakelim,” Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel (2011); “Beyond Landscape,” Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo (2013); Royal Academy of Arts, London (2014); “L’Alchimie du livre,” Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris (2015); Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2015). In 2009, he directed and designed the sets for Am Anfang (In the Beginning) at the Opéra national de Paris. “Kiefer Rodin” will be on view at the Musée Rodin, Paris until October 2017, subsequently traveling to the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia. In November 2017, Kiefer will receive the J. Paul Getty medal for his contribution to the arts.

The presentation provides a singular opportunity to see a focused series of Smith’s work, while celebrating the deep connections between his art and one of the core values of Storm King’s mission: to explore art in nature.

The exhibition celebrates the 50th anniversary of Storm King’s 1967 acquisition of 13 Smith sculptures, which were sited directly in the landscape. This marked the start of Storm King’s focus on the large-scale, outdoor art installations for which it is now well known. The central works of the exhibition, large welded-steel constructions that Smith painted with white industrial enamel, will be installed outdoors on Storm King’s Museum Hill. Smaller sculptures as well as paintings, drawings, and photographs that further explore the artist’s use of white will be displayed inside Storm King’s Museum Building.

Following Smith’s death, his white sculptures became central to an art-historical debate regarding proper custodianship of works of art when Clement Greenberg, an executor of the David Smith Estate, had the artist’s white paint stripped from five of Smith’s sculptures. Greenberg’s actions were exposed in a 1974 Art in America article by the influential art historian and Smith scholar Rosalind Krauss. The works were subsequently restored to their original white color by the Estate. David Smith: The White Sculptures is the first exhibition to bring together and present these works as a group, and to offer viewers the opportunity to fully consider Smith’s complex use of the color white.

David Smith (1906-1965) is widely considered to be one of the foremost artists of the twentieth century, and was the American sculptor most linked to Abstract Expressionism. In 1933 he made the first welded iron sculpture in America, and went on to produce a diverse body of work that has influenced the generations of sculptors who have followed. In the 1950s, Smith began to install groups of sculptures in the fields outside his home and studio in the Adirondack Mountains, contemplating and photographing them in all seasons against the sky, clouds, and surrounding scenery. Smith emphasized the visual nature of sculpture as image, and innovatively incorporated open space into his work. He used white both as a color and as a means to define the structure of positive and negative space in his large outdoor sculptures as well as in his Sprays – paintings and works on paper he produced with industrial spray enamel. Seen in Storm King’s natural landscape, whose rolling hills approximate the geography of Smith’s Adirondack property, David Smith: The White Sculptures will echo Smith’s commitment to presenting art and nature as integrated entities.

David Smith: The White Sculptures is made possible by generous lead support from the Bafflin Foundation, Agnes Gund, Hauser & Wirth, the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Support is also provided by Candida Smith and Carroll Cavanagh and The Henry Moore Foundation. Additional support is provided by The Helis Foundation, and the Robert Lehman Foundation, Inc. Support for the exhibition catalogue is provided by Furthermore: a program of the J.M. Kaplan Fund.

Support for education-related programming is provided by the Sidney E. Frank Foundation, and artist talks are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

Well, if you never got your suitcase back there’s a decent chance your new nemesis made a trip to the Unclaimed Baggage Center in Scottsboro, Alabama. Part lost-and-found, part thrift store, this 40,000sqft superstore takes literally every lost suitcase in America, sifts through it, and puts the best stuff on its shelves. This is the story of how wayward luggage finds its way to the afterlife. 

The store 45 minutes east of Huntsville has been around since 1970, when part-time insurance man Doyle Owens got the idea to purchase unclaimed bags from a local bus station, then sell the contents from tables a couple days a week. Eventually he expanded this practice to airlines, and 46 years later the store is stocking millions of items that Americans have lost on flights.