Another View
An 84-Inch TV Review … From 1975
In a recent effort to get rid of clutter, files and whatever around our home — and when you live someplace for 30 years...
Post Type blog
Another View
2nd Half Upbeat As Consumers, Trade Embrace New Tech
As we look back at the last six months and turn to toward the second half, there are plenty of hopeful signs for the...
Blogs
GetGeeked San Francisco
Last week I attended GetGeeked here in San Francisco. If you’re not familiar, GetGeeked is like a consumer tech meet-up with drinks and food....
Blogs
Pitching Sam’s Club: An Insider’s Account
In this week’s issue of TWICE we reported on a novel sourcing program that Sam’s Club launched last year in its quest for novel,...
Blogs
You Break It? No Problem. Fuhu Answers Parents’ Wishes
Because I cover CE toys, I’m often asked what I think is the best tablet for a child. The scenario typically goes something like...
Blogs
10 Surprising Things We Learned From Our Father’s Day Survey
When it comes to Father’s Day gifts, power tools, neckties and whiskey are bound to be high on most dads’ wish lists. Or are...
Blogs
Why (And How) Retailers Should Embrace ‘Nomophobia’
People are addicted to their smartphones. So much so, there is now a clinical term for the psychological attachment some people have to their...
Blogs
Pomp And Circumspection
So here’s my question: When is your son or daughter old enough for a cellphone? In the town I live in in New Jersey,...
Blogs
The Internet Of Things: What’s Old Is New Again
You think the Internet of Things (IoT) is something new? Think again. Back in the 80s when cellular was young and analog, and before...
Blogs
The Times They Are A-Changin.’ Finally.
A confluence of key retail events this month – the annual ProSource Spring Meeting in San Antonio and Walmart’s shareholders’ gathering in Arkansas –...
Blogs
Is Your Brand The Charm Or The Bracelet?
“We want to be Apple.” There is no sentence we fear more in our business than this. It’s our version of “Make the logo...
Blogs
The Debut, And Disconnect, Of CES Asia
Ni hao from Shanghai! I’m writing from the first-ever CES Asia, where about 25,000 attendees, a vast majority from China and other Asia Pacific...
Blogs
‘Thread,’ ‘Weave’ Leave Me In Stitches
If anything, the folks in the home-automation business are a clever bunch when it comes to naming their technologies. Google calls its new IoT...
Another View
Changing Role Of Buying Groups Takes Another Turn
When I started to write about how buying groups have changed I realized it is thirty years this spring since I attended my first...
Blogs
Some Staggering Statistics About Our Technology World
While CES Asia was light on news and heavy on schmooze, many of the keynoters and speakers shared proprietary data on the staggering size...
Blogs
Dealing With Disruption
The widespread impact from the labor dispute at West Coast ports earlier this year is still rippling through the U.S. economy, with many companies...
Blogs
The 10 Worst Retail Sales Habits And How To Break Them
We’ve all tried to spend more hours at the gym, or give up sugary drinks, but as anyone who’s ever tried knows, bad habits...
Blogs
Why Wall-E Is Scarier Than The Terminator
Last month was the Internet of Things Conference in San Francisco, where the vast floor of the Moscone Center was filled with companies trying...
Blogs
The Case for Live Training
Let me start by saying that I completely understand the need for computer-based and virtual training in today’s retail environment. Shrinking margins and decreased...
Blogs
The Top 10 Technology Moments From “Late Night With David Letterman”
David Letterman is a self-described technophobe, which made the technology business an easy target for his humor over the years. On the occasion of...
Blogs
Digital Living: IoT & The Connected Consumer
For consumers around the world, the Internet of Things (IoT) opens the door to a new and convenient connected lifestyle. The wide range of...
Blogs
The Best And Worst Of Times For Dealers
It’s a classic glass-half-full, glass-half-empty scenario for CE retail. As TWICE’s annual Top 100 CE Retailers Report shows, the largest merchants selling consumer-tech goods...
Blogs
Privacy In The Digital World
What does it mean when we talk about privacy in the information age? Does “privacy” mean the same thing it did 20, even 10...
Blogs
Ring A Ding Ding
Ring A Ding Ding was the title of a 1961 album by Frank Sinatra, and it came to mind when I sat down to...
Blogs
PNDs: Still Room In The Glove Box
Back in October 2009, when Verizon unveiled its first Motorola-made Droid-brand Android phone, Google shocked the navigation world by incorporating free Google turn-by-turn driving...
Blogs
Watch List: Linkitz
The Watch List is an ongoing series that focuses on CE start-ups reaching out to consumers via crowdfunding and other non-traditional methods. Linkitz...
Blogs
The Three Reasons People Still Love Nokia
As we steam into summer, we are about to see the annual appearance of veteran rockers strapping on the guitars for one more round...
Blogs
Google Fi: A Retail Opportunity?
If Google is serious about building a large subscriber base for its low-price Fi MVNO service, the technology giant will consider expanding distribution through...
Blogs
The Apple Watch Offers Retailers Another Path to Customers
The Apple Watch recently started shipping to consumers who placed online orders with the tech giant. According to early estimates, almost a million people...
Blogs
CE Antiques Roadshow
No, I am not referring to certain members of the TWICE staff. I’m referring to the treasure trove of CE-industry artifacts that have accumulated...
Blogs
Retail Revisited: Keeping Showrooms Relevant
Showrooming has plagued brick-and-mortar retailers for many years, with e-commerce quickly chipping away at in-store sales. Recently however, experts report the rising trend is...
Blogs
Reminder: Sell The Season Webinar Replay!
I just want to remind everyone that TWICE’s instructive “Sell The Season” webinar is now available for complimentary replay. You can register here. Senior editor Alan Wolf...
Blogs
Surround Sound: A Look Back
DTS:X and Dolby Atmos are bringing excitement back to the component-audio business. We felt similar excitement 20 years ago when surround sound made its...
Blogs
Wearables Like Fitbit Make A Difference
One of the happy accidents in covering this business is that you get to travel around the country, and during February I traveled to...
Blogs
Has Celebrity Endorsement Jumped the Shark?
Long ago in 2008, Beats by Dre was launched to an unsuspecting world. Unsuspecting in that its approach to the audience was dramatically different....
Blogs
Will IoT Live Up To The Hype?
Remember the dawn of the Internet? Remember all the skeptics who didn’t see its transformational genius? Remember how it became enormous? It’s happening again....
Blogs
On Starpower’s Success
The following is in response to“Have You Heard The News?”a recent letter by TWICE VP/publisher Ed Hecht. The real question that has haunted many retailers:...
Blogs
Five Things Online Merchants Should Know Before Entering New International Markets
Late last year, Digital River commissioned Forrester Consulting to survey 130 executives and decision-makers at branded manufacturers in the U.S. and U.K. We wanted...
Blogs
Musings On Cord-Cutting
Why must this be so complicated? Here’s what we want: HBO. AMC. Local sports. Some kind of children’s programming. (My older one will watch...
Blogs
Former HTC Exec Tries Hand At Wearables
John Wang, the former HTC executive who left the company in 2012, is back in the mobile market, but this time he’s not planning...
Blogs
TigerDirect Defanged
As RadioShack receives a new lease on life, a chapter closes on another less-storied technology chain. Systemax, the IT supplier, announced last month that...
Blogs
Return To Sender
Wrong color. Missing parts. Damaged. Ill-fitting. Returns are pretty much unavoidable in the world of online retail. Most merchants would agree they’ve had to...