Globalization has been with us for a while - the next few years will see more expansion into new markets where supply and demand both exist. What will the role of the new entrant retailer be in those markets and will new retailing forces appear from those quarters?

The online, offline, mobile and social channels are all viable ways to buy, but the consumer will want to hop between them seamlessly. Retailers must provide truly multi-channel experiences and to do so will require deep integration of systems, processes and performance measures

Over the next 5 years we will see a shift in the power balance between retailers and consumers. Social Media followed by VRM will spawn a new generation of applications that will shop on behalf of the consumer - the fourth parties

Five emergent trends that will shape retailing - VRM, Multichannel, Globalization, Payments and Data. What will be the evolution of each of these trends and how should retailers respond?

We're excited to be participating in the 2011 Semantic Technology conference in San Francisco! You can catch Anne Hunt and Simon Hadley discussing Real-Time Semantic ETL today, June 7 at 2:40PM PDT, and Anne Hunt, Simon Handley, and To Kim presenting Innovation-in-a-Box during the poster session on Wednesday, June 8 from 10:45AM to 3:45PM PDT. We're also officially launching First Retail Innovation-in-a- Box™, a new service to enable companies to more effectively leverage the benefits of semantic technology, and transforming the way big enterprise works with big data... more info

What happens when you reverse the marketing funnel and you allow a consumer to specify exactly what they want? So a merchant or manufacturer would be able to go to the market and ask 'who is looking for this item at this price at this location?' and will obtain a list of qualified buyers. A number of ideologies and start-ups are taking advantage of web-technology to allow consumers to publish their needs and wants - will the end-result be a new breed of electronically enabled 'middle-men'?

To our friends old and new: those who came to the party - thank you for being there and sharing our celebration; and those who didn't make it - we missed you this time and we look forward to being able to spending time with you soon.

It's been an interesting twelve months for First Retail - starting from zero with just a smart and dedicated team - first one client, then another and now we have five great organizations whom we are proud to be working with. And above all, the support network of our friends and ex-colleagues who provided people, skills, advice and work - sometimes just in the nick of time. So to everyone who has been a part of our first year - a huge thank you. We look forward to returning the favors.

What’s the link between the trends of more and more objects and even commercial transactions on the web being described in a machine-readable, semantic format and the endless streaming of all that data? Revenue-funded startup First Retail, whose principals Anne Jude Hunt and Simon G. Handley will be speaking at the upcoming Semantic Technology Conference in June, thinks the answer is semantic ETL.

Here are a few sites we think you should check out

The provocation is that a traditional retailer’s current set of capabilities and differentiators no longer delivers competitive advantage. A host of new entrants, not instantly recognizable as retailers, is turning the retail experience inside out. This post dissects the broader retail experience as it is shaping up and sets the technology imperatives for the modern retail enterprise.