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Comment by bsder | Hacker News Reader

> The demise of the department store is largely due to them squandering their biggest advantage which was customer service and customer experience.

And inventory. And different inventory.

It used to be that each department store had different fashions. As such, there was a difference between each chain. However, once they all started selling the same Chinese crap, there was no differentiation so why buy ono anything other than price.

And department stores used to have inventory and more than one of each size. How many times do you need to go into a department store and find that they don't have your size before you quit going in at all?

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I wouldn’t blame China for sudden demand for extremely cheap goods. They’re just responding to the same market incentives like everyone else. You see this race to the bottom in every market segment not just the ones that are typically supplied by Chinese manufacturers.

I would say they forced the Chinese goods on us rather than giving us a choice between good quality and cheap. In my opinion it was not market forces but corporate forces that made the choice for us.

I also suspect we forget how in the "good ol days" that you would go into a department store and they wouldn't have your size even before the internet and cheap goods.

I absolutely remember this with sneakers a few times. Oops, sorry that size is out of stock. Go to a different store, oops sorry that size is out of stock. Could go to 3 different locations and still come home empty handed.

To believe department stores use to always have every size is simply not reality IMO.

China is a billion people economy, it's a strong opinion to say that "everything out of china is the same crap". You can order anything for manufacture there at any quality point and nobody forces a dept store to order the exact same clothes from the exact same factory (out of tens of thousands factories) as the neighbour store.

I'd attribute it to laziness. I mean, they might actually DO check where the neighbour store orders from and order the same.. :)

Then again all the clothing stores where I live have inventory and different sizes and definitely sell different things than the other stores so I guess this trend is not universal hopefully..

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