Survival Of The Innovative

I’ve written a couple of recent columns about the potential Trump effect on trade and taxes for U.S. retailers. These are topics that you should be on top of. Despite the fact that they’re out of your immediate control, you can, and of course should, make your voice heard. In the NRF and RILA, the retail industry has a solid lobbying presence in D.C. The strong representation of a collective industry is prerequisite to influence. If you don’t like what you see coming, join them, and fight city hall.

With that being said, don’t let fighting city hall become your day job. Don’t let the Trump administration’s tax and trade proposals—proposals that currently aren’t looking particularly retail friendly—bring you down. And if those proposals slide their way into policy, certainly don’t let them take you down. Don’t let them be your excuse for failure.

A couple of weeks ago, I spoke with a man who could be on pins and needles for the next several months—maybe years—if he allowed himself to be. His name is Frank Piet, and he’s COO of a retail software development company called Emporos. Pharmacy is the company’s core competency. As you might imagine, a good deal of his company’s success in recent years has pivoted on the company’s ability to develop software that complies with—and helps retail pharmacists navigate the complexities of—the Affordable Care Act, AKA Obamacare.

Image credit: "Donald Trump," Gage Skidmore © 2011, used under an Attribution 2.0 Generic license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/