With digital commerce attracting a lot of attention, it's sometimes easy to forget just how valuable physical retail remains. While tech gurus like Silicon Valley entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen may predict the impending doom of offline stores, there's no evidence that, in the highly tactile fashion industry, sales at physical retail stores won't continue to dominate as a proportion of total sales volume.
Marc Andreessen
As e-commerce companies take hold of a growing market of internet shoppers, category-specific retailers may very well face a tough future ahead, Bloomberg reports. Brick-and-mortar retailers that offer a specific niche of product face bigger challenges in fixed costs of real estate and inventory than online retailers. Marc Andreessen, co-founder and general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, said those businesses can be quickly driven into bankruptcy.
Investor Marc Andreessen thinks traditional retailers are going to feel the heat next year as e-commerce "category killers" in verticals like electronics and home furnishings clean up. That's what he told CNET in an interview where he offered up some predictions for the coming year.
Microsoft Corp. and Skype Global S.a r.l have entered into a definitive agreement under which Microsoft will acquire Skype for $8.5 billion in cash from the investor group led by Silver Lake. The agreement has been approved by the boards of directors of both Microsoft and Skype. eBay had acquired Skypein 2005 under Meg Whitman approximately $2.6 billion. It then sold 70% of Skype for $1.9 billion in 2009 to an investor group led by Silver Lake that included Index Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) Investment Board in a deal valuing the business at $2.75
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