In a way, the Retail Technology newsletter, which celebrated its first birthday at the end of April, has been like a TV series.
Through its first year, a central storyline emerged along with several side plots, just like when TV shows have one-off episodes separate from the overarching narrative.
The main plot has been this: Digital retail is here, and auto retailers need to adapt if they haven’t already. The technology landscape has been peppered with other news and topics such as a Cars.com no-sale, data protection, battles over dealership management system data and the Auto/Mate-DealerSocket tie-up.
Then came the season finale. If we had been writing a fictional series rather than a newsletter, the producers would have no doubt told us the storyline had become too absurd: A global pandemic suddenly causes the closure of brick-and-mortar stores throughout the country, forcing dealers to embrace digital retailing nearly overnight. Reality can be stranger than fiction.
But this newsletter differs from a TV series written, edited, produced, filmed and then delivered to a content platform at arm’s length. The Retail Technology newsletter has been and will continue to be a living, breathing work in progress, based on what’s happening in the automotive retail tech space. As such, we continue to value feedback on how we can improve on our mission of delivering information that is important to you, our readers. We also welcome tips and story ideas. Please reach out to us at [email protected] and [email protected].
And as the second year of the newsletter gets going, I think we can all agree on this: Let’s hope for a less dramatic season two finale.