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Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

> As part of a 10-year contract with Walgreens for a split of the ad revenue, Cooler Screens had installed 10,000 smart doors at hundreds of US locations like this one. It planned to install 35,000 more

Why not do a smaller test run to gauge response?

I question the ability for anyone who oked this to make basic decisions…

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The article says "He and Wasson say that based on their PowerPoint presentation, the company approved a six-store pilot program for 2018. Pilot data showed the screens resulting in more than a 5% incremental sales jump, and Walgreens committed to installing them in an additional 50 stores the next year as part of a decade-long deal. In late 2020, after Walgreens agreed to add another 2,450"

The Cooler Screens CEO sounds like a “fake it till you make it at all costs” kind of guy just based on the allegations of fraud at his tea company and his conspiracy allegations at the Four Seasons interview. I’d be very wary of any data provided by his company indicating increased sales, it’s very easy to manipulate the excel data if nobody is verifying how the data was collected in the first place.

But shouldn’t increased sales numbers be something Walgreens measures? On the other hand, this was probably some mid-level exec’s chance at growing in the company, so maybe there was some internal incentive to massage the numbers (e.g. maybe 5% is much smaller than the per-store standard deviation).

I dunno, just guessing.

The article mentions

"[Cooler Screens CEO] Avakian [...] says [Walgreens] turned off its access to point-of-sale data for products outside the cold section, which brands like Revlon needed to confirm lipstick ads on fridges really were enticing shoppers to walk over to the beauty aisle."

> Pilot data showed the screens resulting in more than a 5% incremental sales jump

because it's a novelty and draws attention. soon afterwards replaced with annoyance about this total nonsense.

In corporate speak, this was a major sales win for that startup, and I don’t think they would have gone this far without a lot of people at Walgreens buying into the concept.

Which makes me think there is a major disconnect between those people and Walgreens customers—I mean, it’s obvious that people who like shopping like to browse, and that they also like to have the least possible amount of stuff between them and what they are looking for.

So completely breaking that experience (and often having people open doors that had no product behind them) is probably frustrating enough for those people to shop elsewhere, or to simply avoid those aisles and shop less.

Genius move, if you want to lose customers.

FOMO? Perhaps they were offered exclusivity?

Also, it's a brand new income stream. Managers love to talk about income streams at shareholder meetings.

FTA: "Avakian co-founded the startup with former Walgreens CEO Greg Wasson, who helped secure the deal with his old employer."

The article also mentions that, under Wasson, Walgreens invested millions in Theranos.

Great track record there.

Agreed, the people who set and approved the pilot size are the important ones to remove from the decision making process

Per the article, they did.

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