CAPSTONE: That leaves anchor department stores and malls scrambling to figure out how to leverage their real estate. Many retailers this year turned to outlet models in hopes of boosting profits, leveraging the success of off-price units like T.J. Maxx. Both Nordstrom and Macy’s are bolstering their respective off-price units, Rack and Backstage. However,  Lewis says their plan backfired on their flagship brands. “Outlet store expansion is suicidal,” he said. 

BRAND: Tesla started 2016 as an electric-car maker that had branched out into energy storage. By the end of the year, Elon Musk's company has become an automaker, an energy company, the builder of a massive battery factory in Nevada, and a solar company through its merger with SolarCity. Tesla is also on track to delivery about 80,000 vehicles in 2016, more than ever before. So it was a big year. But 2017 will be even bigger.

ECOMMERCE: The holiday shopping season is the most important time of the year for many online retailers. But the weeks and even months after the holidays can be a slow period for retail ecommerce businesses. It is therefore important that Internet storeowners and marketers have a post-holiday plan to generate sales or otherwise retool the business for a new and better year. There are many ways your business can plan for post-holiday conversions. What follows are a few suggestions.

ECOMMERCE: The eCommerce giant began rolling out private-label food products in June, starting with Happy Belly coffee and Mama Bear baby food. In those cases, however, the company was much more stealthy about the fact that they’re its own private label brands. This is part of Amazon’s larger push into private-label products. The company has been more clear about its affiliation with its non-food private labels. The company sells household goods and other items under the Amazon Basics and Amazon Elements brands.

BRAND: What does it to for a brand to truly break through in today’s crowded market? Just as it has with everything else, digital transformation has upended the traditional rules of marketing. In less than a decade brands like Uber and Airbnb have attained the kind of consumer mindshare that companies used to have to work decades to create. Part of this is the simple fact that most of these newer brands are technology companies; they provide products and services that themselves can be built almost overnight, thanks to the proliferation of smartphones, cloud computing, and fast, free, and universally accessible digital tools. 

BRAND: Adidas was also behind some of the biggest new sneakers of 2016. People of course lined up for the Yeezy line it produced with Kanye West. But its new style, the NMD, was equally buzzed about. (Together, those styles accounted for most of the highly sought sneakers at Sneaker Con, the rapidly growing convention billed as “the greatest sneaker show on earth.”) These limited-run shoes built up its brand prestige while leaving fans wanting more, and Adidas added to its cred through collaborations with streetwear godfathers.

BRAND: The effort, which launched on Dec. 14, features the photos and stories of customers who left Gillette, only to return when they found the quality of these disruptors didn’t compare to their previous brands. Using digital media, the company asked people to tweet the reasons they were leaving one of the discount brands, and included them in a video on the campaign’s microsite using the theme song from ’70s sitcom “Welcome Back, Kotter.” The video also includes photos of these returners and explanations about why they came back, such as “kept getting nicks and cuts” and “the blades didn’t last as long.”

ECOMMERCE: If you got a speedy delivery on a last-minute gift at the height of holiday season, you might have Amazon's fleet of cargo planes to thank for pulling off a minor miracle. Although Amazon says the fleet is only meant to supplement Fedex and UPS at the moment, its own air cargo business will eventually play an important part in letting Amazon handle end-to-end logistics. According to a new report from Reuters, Jeff Bezos and company have already figured out how to leverage their private fleet to minimize overhead while getting the most out of their shipping partners at the same time.