Virtual Beauty And Global Retail Sizzle, Brookstone And Facebook Fizzle

Sizzle

Global retail connected market: It’s set to top $82 billion in just a few scant years. Not a bad haul, considering the fact that retail in general is growing at about 1.6 percent as measured annually through the first quarter of this year. But then again, spending on IoT is slated to be hundreds of billions of dollars annually, giving an indication of the sea change afoot.

Virtual beauty ready for its close-up: Augmented reality, chatbots, messengers – any way you look at it, the future looks good for looking good by way of digital advisers. Anecdotal evidence shows that firms like L’Oréal and others are consulting through ones and zeroes, where in-person visits were once the norm. No more guesswork in how to apply the foundation, and how to let one’s inner spirit show on the outside.

Wayfair: Online sales are more than way fair for the eCommerce furniture firm, which sees a boost from its first Way Day sale, and sales through its online sites are up 49 percent as measured by direct online revenue. The increase is the biggest in the firm’s history.

Fizzle

ICOs: Black eye on the treasure that was fool’s gold, showing scams of an inventive sort. Russian ships, gold that may not be there, and millions lost from the masses in an ICO that seemingly went poof. In South Korea, sunken treasure has led to sunken investor fortunes via Shinil Gold.

Facebook: Turns out even the chief security officer feels less than secure, steps down, right after a huge drop in the stock price, and no shortage of negative headlines. Then again, he’s headed to academia, where one might think the discourse is a bit tamer than seen amid the data privacy debate. Some reports indicate that no one is going to replace the departing chief, which leads one to wonder what’s next.

Retail casualty: Brookstone files for bankruptcy, the latest marquee name to go the way of soooo many once-illustrious peers. Gadgets, there were plenty. Solutions to dearth of foot traffic hitting malls? There were none.