This contribution documents the contrasting fate of three key actors of the retail industry since the mid-nineties: Carrefour, Wal-Mart and Amazon. Stylized facts about their respective financial trajectories and a description of their engagement with digitalization allow to identify their distinct dynamics. Through a combination of accounting, business and economic analyses, this paper clarifies the underlying logics of profit making in the context of retail digitalization and provides new insights concerning the role of fixed costs leveraging in the digital age.