At the recent SENPA/SOHO natural products trade show, we had the chance to sit with Aaron Gottlieb, founder and owner of Native Sun Natural Foods Market, which has three stores in Jacksonville, FL. Here are excerpts from our conversation. WholeFoods Magazine (WF): Please tell us a little about your stores.
Watching Wall Street hammer major food-retailing stocks immediately after Amazon’s June announcement to buy Whole Foods Market, I can understand why you — an independent natural products retailer — may have felt a shiver down your spine. Since then, those grocery stocks have recovered most of their losses as investors...
Does Amazon care what it sells? Does Whole Foods Markets care what it sells? The opposing answers to these two questions—“No” and “Yes” respectively—are at the heart of the problem Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos, now hopes to solve. Put another way, can Bezos make fresh, organic, free-range filet mignon behave...
In January, we published the main findings from the 2017 – 39th Annual Retailer Survey by WholeFoods Magazine. Hundreds of independent natural products retailers from across the U.S. participated, representing $1.59 billion in sales and over 2.5 million square feet of retail space. It was by far the largest response...
I squeaked through the public elementary and high school system during a time when it was still socially and culturally acceptable to win—and to lose—competitions like footraces, softball games, rope climbing, and spelling bees. Teachers still graded papers with embarrassingly bright red markers, highlighting areas needing improvement. At the time,...
With the Internet putting extreme pressure on the way you’ve always done business, it’s easy to feel helpless. First, take a moment to console yourself that you are not alone. Virtually every business in every industry has had to rethink and restructure its business model to continue to compete in...
