The Crisis of Retail

In the 60's and 70's I lived in a town which didn't have any department stores except "5 and dime" stores. To get really good stuff you could go into the city or you could go to the Sears catalog store. You could literally walk into a store and browse their catalog, order stuff from a clerk behind a counter, and wait for it to come in. There were some small items like mixers on display, but not necessarily in stock. During the holiday rush, this store would be hopping.

The Sears catalog store in my town was in the same small mall (think "bigger than a strip mall") as a "5 and dime" store and a supermarket. It was not the anchor store, the supermarket was.

I almost relived that last week when I bought a router from Best Buy's web site and picked it up from the nearest store. Best Buy is not the only B&M chain that has this. I could imagine that to the extent retailers survive it is in this fashion or something like it. Either about the same size as now for browsing, or smaller pick-up points.

And then of course we have drones and so on.

Keep in mind though, Amazon is showing us how to annihilate such a model by bringing up trust problems (see "commingling").

Some other factors:

- Many malls chased out the teenagers, sometimes indirectly by forcing out arcades and such that might be hangouts, and sometimes directly with bans. When they grew up, "going to the mall" was no longer even on their radar.

- Some malls went crazy with outbuildings, to the point you'd hardly realize there was a mall amid the clutter.

- Along that same line, a lot of people want to just dash into one store, get what they're looking for, and get out. Smaller stores in malls are generally not visible from the street.

Overlooks the more basic problem that it's simply overbuilt. There are quite a few articles where CEOs point at the over-abundance of retail in general: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/u-s-retailers-have-a-ridiculous-...

Even as stores die, they seem to get replaced by even more stores elsewhere.

What will happen to these malls that close? Will they be modified and turned into multi office buildings? Would/could enough workers support the food courts? I suppose they wouldn't need quite as much parking so more satellite office buildings? More co-working spaces? What does the future hold in your opinion?

the idea that makerspaces will replace retail seems bizarre. People go to these places to experiment, build and have fun - not to produce day-to-day objects for use. 3D printing is still far too expensive to be used for generating commodities too.

I don't buy that the middle class don't have as much money anymore: while that would impact large purchases (house, car) most stuff you can buy today is pretty cheap - you can get a six plate dinner set for under 20 on Amazon and a couch for 100. A 40 inch HD tv will set you back less than 200 - when I was growing up such a tv would have cost you more like 200.

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/retail-sales I'm not seeing any crisis as of yet (there's a small dip, but looking at the 10 year historical data it looks like it well within normal ranges)