The disruption of the past 18 months at retail has forced the major brands to reassess their traditional business models that relied heavily on a strong wholesale channel and they are all reaching just about the same conclusion. In the future, they will have to bond their brands to consumers more directly through their own full price brick-and-mortar stores and, even more importantly, with a strong digital business. Meanwhile, they will have to make an accommodation to Amazon because it is impossible to ignore the traffic there. The fact that Nike has reached détente essentially gives every brand permission to ... Log in to view full article.