[7777777phil]

Efficiency gains can look like pure wins on the balance sheet while quietly eroding customer relationships that took decades to build. The people who ran the numbers on ATM rollouts probably weren't wrong about transaction costs, they just weren't measuring what mattered most.

Imo Nike's D2C push had the same logic. Higher margins per sale, more control over the brand experience, direct customer data. All true. But it turns out that being on the shelf next to Hoka and On, where a customer can try both, was doing more work than anyone gave it credit for..