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4 key traits retailers need to adopt to thrive in 2018.
An eleven-time Grammy winner, Sting revived the soul of rock and roll by infusing reggae just when the genre was growing stale. His far lesser known accomplishment is starring in the birth of internet retail.

On August 11, 1994, the first ever ecommerce transaction occurred when a 21-year-old in New Hampshire named Dan Kohn sold a copy of Sting’s Ten Summoner’s Tales to a friend in Philadelphia who paid $12.48 by credit card. Though Kohn and Sting got the party started, the age of ecommerce didn’t truly begin in earnest until 1997. That year, a spunky Wall Street trader pointed his car west for Seattle and decided to “obsess over customers,” building an ecommerce empire that has reshaped the world economy.

Now as ecommerce turns 20, $2 trillion of goods are bought and sold online, with online commerce reaching a projected $4 trillion globally by 2020. If this year’s Single’s Day was any indication, Amazon and Alibaba alone are on a collision course to be the world’s first trillion dollar companies, steamrolling much of retail’s traditional old guard in the process.  

But what do the brands who are thriving amidst this mass disruption of retail ultimately have in common? Many will highlight that they offer direct to consumer models that cut out the middleman (i.e. store) and exist solely online. While these comprise the majority of VC-backed ecommerce darlings, plenty of traditional store models are doing just fine.