Techno-punditry about the future of retail—like the other industries being disrupted by technology (which includes basically all of them)—has no shortages of soothsayers and buzzword abusers. Beacons! Personalization! Omnichannel! So. Much. Noise.

Consistently cutting through that noise is Scott Galloway, Clinical Professor of Marketing at NYU Stern School of Business and founder of L2 (a business intelligence company with a focus on digital).

I've pulled eight particularly salient points from Galloway's talk at DLD, which he gave earlier this year.

1) Amazon is not in the top 10 fastest growing e-commerce retailers. Instead, Dick's Sporting Goods tops the list (65 percent, Q1 2014) followed byAutoZone (59 percent), Costco (49 percent), Lowe's (49 percent), Ascena Retail Group (dressbarn, Lane Bryant, et al.; 33 percent).
source cited in video: L2

2) Warby Parker storefronts sell $3,000 per square foot annually. That's more than most retailers, including Best Buy, Tiffany, and Ralph Lauren.
source cited in video: WSJ

3) Amazon's Achille's Heel is their net shipping costs. In 2014, they charged $3.1B in shipping fees and spent $6.6B in transportation costs to deliver. The chasm between what they charge and what they pay will continue to widen—since Amazon Prime launched, its shipping costs have increased more than 25 percent and in the first nine months of 2014 they were up 39 percent.
source cited in video: Bloomberg Businessweek, Amazon, Journal of Commerce

4) To decrease their transportation costs, Amazon needs to make a brick and mortar acquisition. Galloway suggests Radio Shack, a gas station chain, or the U.S. Post Office. source cited in video: NYU Professor Scott Galloway

5) Macy's doesn't have Amazon's transportation cost problem. In addition to having smartly invested $2B on technology and e-commerce, their physical stores are acting as "ship to store" and "online in-store pickup" locations while still serving as good old fashioned store fronts, earning revenue-per-square foot, too.
source cited in video: Inside Retailer

6) The future of employment is strong, but the wages will be weak. The on-demand economy is driving this, as well as the shrinking government sector.
source cited in video: NELP analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data

7) Lots of players are chipping away at Google's search-per-day volume. There are now 1B daily searches on Facebook to Google's 3B. Two-thirds of high-value commerce searches originate on Amazon. Oh and mobile is doing Google Search no favors, either. When people are on mobile, they are less likely to go to a browser to search (on average, 80 percent of mobile usage time is spent in native apps, while just 20 percent of mobile usage time is spent in a browser). As a result, Google's cost-per-click growth has plummeted to negative digits starting in late 2011 / early 2012.
source cited in video: Business Insider, Search Engine Land, Google's earning reports

8) Let's talk about the six essential pillars for luxury brand formation. Craftsmanship. Iconic founder. Exceptional pricepoint. (Control of) vertical distribution. Global. Self-expressive benefit. This is Apple, folks. And the fact that it is a brand that effectively sells to the head, heart, and desire to procreate (self expression with expensive things = plumage, proves financial virility) is the reason that Galloway says it will be the first trillion dollar company.
source cited in video: NYU Professor Scott Galloway

Hungry for more? The L2 YouTube channel is chock full of must-watch videos on and around this topic.