In 1974, a pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit chewing gum changed retail forever. |
At a Marsh grocery store in Troy, Ohio, it was the first product ever sold via a barcode. And, in the years that followed, it ushered in a wave of efficiency – and profits. |
Before the barcode, stock clerks used pricing guns to stick price labels on items. At checkout, cashiers looked at the price stamped on the item and punched it into the cash register. |
Restocking was also a slog. Most daily restocking was based on "eyeballing" it. A manager would walk the aisles with a pad of paper, see a hole on the shelf, and write down that they needed to order more of that item. |
About once a month, stores would close their doors for an entire day to perform manual inventory counts. |
The barcode turned inventory and pricing into a data-driven science. |
Checkout costs went down, and by some estimates, speed went up by 40%. Between 1976 and 1980, the number of stores using barcodes grew from 104 to 2,207. |
Barcodes also made "just-in-time" manufacturing possible. Companies like Walmart have since mastered the science of holding only what they need, drastically reducing warehouse costs. |
As a result, more grocery stores began to generalize. They added pharmacies, electronics, clothing, and flowers. |
In 1960, there were only about 33,000 larger-format grocery stores in the United States. Today, there are more than 305,000. |
That scale happened because automation technologies like the barcode – and those that followed – squeezed a lot of the inefficiency out of the system. This drove more money into companies' profits… and shareholders' pockets. |
For instance, a $1,000 stake in Costco's IPO in 1985 – when the warehouse giant began using digital inventory tracking to undercut traditional retail prices – would be worth roughly $572,000 today. By comparison, the same $1,000 stake would be worth only $34,372 today in the S&P 500. |
And if you'd caught the next wave of retail automation with Amazon – the company that used e-commerce to put many brick-and-mortar stores out of business – a $1,000 investment at their 1997 IPO would be worth over $3 million today. By comparison, the same $1,000 stake would be worth only $8,678 today in the S&P 500. |
Today, artificial intelligence (AI) is taking efficiency to a whole new level. |
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The Future of Retail |
I got a firsthand look at the future of retail on my recent trip to Las Vegas. |
I was there for CES, one of the biggest tech conferences in the world. And this year, robots stole the show. |
I saw a robot unloading delivery pallets… |
 | Source: Houston Molnar, CES Vegas 2026 |
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And another being trained on how to restock shelves… |
 | Source: Houston Molnar, CES Vegas 2026 |
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I also spoke with a woman who works for a Chinese robotics company. It's designing food delivery robots – or what retailers call the "last mile" of grocery shopping. |
It's an area that's increasingly being handled by sidewalk robots and delivery drones. |
Walmart, for example, plans to offer aerial delivery at 270 stores by the end of next year. And roughly 3 in 4 Amazon global deliveries are currently assisted in some way by robotics. |
Smart robots are also boosting efficiency when it comes to stocking store shelves. |
Just this month, Simbe Robotics launched its Tally 4.0 autonomous robot. Tally scans every aisle in a store, capturing the data retailers need to keep shelves stocked and prices accurate. It can detect up to 10 times more out-of-stocks than manual audits. |
And once you see the numbers for the retail robotics market, you can't unsee them. |
It's set to jump from $16.6 billion in 2024… to $164 billion by 2032. That's a massive compound annual growth rate of 33%. |
But this isn't just about faster deliveries or slightly better margins. |
For retail companies, it's the difference between staying relevant in an increasingly digital world… or being replaced by those that do. |
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The Next Wave of Automation |
Retail is a low-margin, labor-intensive business. |
Take grocery giant Kroger. It does $187 billion in revenue per year with just 1.8% net margins. By comparison, an AI company like Nvidia does 56% in net margins. |
If Kroger boosts its margins by just 1 percentage point, to 2.8%, that'll increase profits by $1.9 billion. Without opening a single new storefront or selling one extra bag of potato chips. |
That's $1.9 billion in "found money" that works its way to the bottom line… and into your pocket as a shareholder. |
That's why AI matters here. And it's the same story for big-box majors like Costco. |
Costco generated $254 billion in revenue in 2024, and has margins of 2.9%. It doesn't need AI to reinvent its business model to earn a big payday. It just needs AI to increase margins by 1 percentage point to net $2.5 billion in cost savings. |
That's why the biggest retail gains will come from the companies that can deploy AI and robotics to cut costs… boost productivity… and expand margins. |
Those that fail to adapt will risk being replaced by higher-margin retail models. |
Take this story about Amazon, which has a net profit margin of nearly 10%. It has completely disrupted the retail industry with its e-commerce empire. Between 2016 and 2019, Amazon converted around 25 dead shopping malls into distribution centers. |
In other words, it's hard to compete with automation. |
That's why Teeka recently recommended a legacy retail company that's plugging AI into its sprawling global operations. Right now, it's trading at an 89% discount to popular AI names like Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla. |
You'll find the name of this retailer in Teeka's new research service, The Asymmetric Edge. And he's included four other legacy blue-chip companies deploying AI tech at scale to increase efficiency and magnify profits in his new special report, Nvidia's Paycheck Program: The Top Five Companies for Massive AI Payouts. |
Before 1974, humans were the "brains" of the store. They tracked inventory, memorized prices, and keyed them in by hand at the cash register. |
In 2026, the "brain" is increasingly becoming a distributed AI network. In that network, robots act as the eyes and hands, ensuring the shelf is never empty and the checkout never has a line. |
Just like the barcode helped usher in a new era of automation for retail decades ago, AI is doing the same today. |
This is exactly why I urge you to watch Teeka's recent special AI briefing. He'll show you how to position yourself to profit from this powerful trend before the rest of the world fully wakes up. |
Don't Watch the Future Happen. Own It! |
Houston Molnar |
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