Should Firefly Be Feared?

By Matt Pillar, chief editor

August 2014 Integrated Solutions For Retailers

Be afraid — be very afraid — of Firefly. Amazon’s new Fire Phone features an app designed to even further empower the showroomers you’re so loath to let walk your aisles. Now, all it takes is one snap of a product picture by a Firefly-wielding consumer, and bam. Your goose is cooked. They’re instantly taken to the item on Amazon.com, where it’s probably cheaper and they’re just a click away from buying it. Oh, the humanity. Goodbye forever, brick-and-mortar retail.

That’s the impression I get, anyway. The flippant writing I’ve been reading in the mainstream press threatens that Firefly will “bring Amazon’s fight to the doorstep of every store” and that the app, available exclusively on the Fire Phone, equates to a “retail bombshell.” My, oh, my.