Off-price and eCommerce have never been the best of friends. Consumers don't browse a slowly-updated website, inventory control in their stores is nearly impossible, and off-price needs incredibly large basket sizes for the entire model to work.

HomeGoods, owned by TJMaxx was on Oracle ATG (from what I can tell) - with a hitlist of "vendors" such as Ensighten (still a thing?!), one of the personalization vendors that Kibo sold off (that Kibo Personalization is still mentioned in their code gives you some idea how old it is), Adobe Target, Adobe Analytics, and a long line of other expensive vendors that their business model truly cannot support.

There are many Oracle ATG refugees (even in this audience) who are in the midst of figuring out what to do next. The reality is Oracle ATG was always a dog's breakfast of a solution: a powerful database but weak, aging, and brittle parts. Chewed-up parts of once-interesting companies cobbled together and resold as an "complete platform" in service of an increasingly irrelevant vision quadrant.

Is it any wonder I encourage companies to start from their own business model and consumer experience vision to make decisions, and not things like "vendor completeness of vision?"

I think a lot of people are getting hung up on some kind of fight between retail and eCommerce. Instead, I encourage focus on a replatform journey which involves self-discovery and focuses on digital experiences of all kinds.

The critical questions start with:

1 - What is our reason for existing?

2 - Where can an integrated digital experience enhance and support that vision from awareness through to loyalty?

3 - What constraints does our financial model demand, and how can new digital experiences enhance or improve our financial model over time?

Would love to know if you have any other questions you like to start with at the beginning of a journey.

From here, innovation and experimentation becomes the order of the day. Concept stores and experiences need to be proven, tested, and refined in the real world. And in the off-price business, clearly that needs to happen on a budget.

But the narrative and message to be clear here. What failed here is not eCommerce writ large. What failed was decisionmaking, lack of digital vision, and gross misalignment of solution to financial model.