I do think that after the “trend” of buying clothes online passes, that at least will come back to brick and mortar. Off the rack clothes just don’t fit well and it’s mandatory that they be tried on. Right now what people are doing is buying them online, trying them on at home and then returning what doesn’t fit. Which might often be the entire order.
However, some of the credit card processors are fighting back against refunding merchant processing fees. (If you refund your customer’s order, they used to also refund the processing fee back to you so you’re 0 out of pocket. But now they’re keeping the fees even if you refund your customer.) Paypal stopped doing it last year and Shopify just recently did it too. I don’t remember if Square is still refunding the fees, and of course the retailers big enough to have their own agreements with the credit card companies have their own thing going. At any rate, in a small business forum I lurk in someone made the very astute comment that this trend is going to really kill online clothing stores.
Karma’s a bitch. The malls killed off the downtowns. Now the internet is killing off the malls. Someday, something we can’t picture right now will kill off internet shopping. I’d like to hope the downtowns will return to do the job…
Which part- the good job market? That’s hard to argue- we’re near a 50 year low unemployment rate. Which then means that what he’s saying could actually be true- why would someone with knowledge stick around and work at Home Depot (for example), if the job market is tight enough such that there are higher paying jobs elsewhere with their skills in mind? Considering that construction jobs pay more than Home Depot and are also generally suitable for the sort of people who would make highly skilled HD workers, it’s entirely logical and reasonable to think that’s exactly what would happen.
That’s how the labor market generally works- the more skill/specialized/unique knowledge you have that’s useful, the more you get paid, as the assumption is that the rarity of your knowledge/experience/skill is commensurate with your degree of skill. So a Home Depot guy with relevant home remodeling experience or construction experience may well make more money working in construction, or at a more specialized store, like a commercial supplier, leaving Home Depot with the people willing to work for their measly money.
That’s why a burger flipper makes minimum wage, and Gerrit Cole makes millions- there is ONE player with Cole’s skills and abilities, and that’s him. It’s why no major league team will pay me a dime to play baseball- I stink!
Meanwhile, there are literally hundreds of millions of people who can watch a timer and flip a burger. So sports owners are willing to pay Cole a LOT, while that burger flipper can easily be replaced with someone else willing to work for minimum wage, if the burger flipper doesn’t perform, doesn’t show up, has a bad attitude, etc… And that also means that there’s no incentive to pay him more- why would you, if you can replace him with someone equally capable of flipping burgers for minimum wage?
The flip side is that when things go sideways economically, those construction jobs may dry up; at that point, Home Depot can hire that guy for their measly wage, as that’s what the market will bear for that particular skill and experience level in lieu of available construction jobs.
Did Marcus buy the hat? How much did that one hat cost, for the level of service provided? How much time did all of that customer servicing, fitting, and refitting take, to sell that one hat (assuming he actually bought it). How many hats have to be sold this way for that place to pay the rent and provide the owner/employees with livable income? I’m honestly amazed that places like this can stay in business period.
Something like the Mall of America is very different from a typical shopping mall – it’s primarily a tourist destination, and it draws a substantial portion of its visitors from outside of the local area of the mall itself.
So, shopping malls, in general, dying off, and the Mall of America maybe still thriving, are two different things.
Both Miami and New York are major tourist destinations, particularly for people from outside the US, so perhaps that’s why they chose those two locations. And as I understand it, a good part of the Mall of America is devoted to stuff like an amusement park, an aquarium, movie theaters and so forth. Stuff you have to do in person, rather than ordering from Amazon. I see the same thing at the mall near where I grew up. There’s a multiplex there now, along with a Dave & Busters and lots of restaurants.
I didn’t have as much of a problem with the pricing change as most people. I actually thought it was a good idea. I used to do most of my clothes buying at Penney’s, especially their Arizona jeans and their Oxford cloth dress shirts. It would drive me crazy to have to wait until the clothes I needed were “on sale” so that I could get a shirt or jeans for $20 instead of the marked-up $40.
But around the same time as the change in pricing model, they also cut store inventory roughly in half. And they remodeled the stores to look more spacious, when really all they were doing was covering up the fact that there was less merchandise to display.
I used to have a whole closet full of Oxford shirts in literally every color of the rainbow. Now all I can find at Penney’s are white, blue, and a hideous bright pink. And the only Arizona jeans I can find anymore are the ones targeted for people half my age – no more plain old relaxed fit boot cut jeans, just the baggy ripped ones that look like they’ve been soaking in grease.
So I quit shopping at Penney’s, and apparently so did everyone else, because our local Penney’s closed down about 2-3 years ago. But when I have an opportunity to go to a Penney’s in some other city, it’s still the same crappy selection, so I’ve pretty much given up on them.
I wonder if stores are intentionally trying to move customers online to save on inventory and staffing costs. There have been multiple times this last year, in stores ranging from Nordstrom to Penney’s, where I have been told this color/size isn’t in stock but can be bought online. Or worse yet, told an item bought in-store can’t be shipped to a specific address–but will be shipped if I buy it online.
Europe did not take to malls in the same way, but one development was of hypermarkets just outside a town, with good road access and parking. They might be within a mall, or on their own. They usually had a dramatic effect on the local downtown retailers.
My feeling is that bricks and mortar survives if it can meet the need for some product that you need right then, or which you need to look at or even try on. It’s hard buying shoes online, as the actual size and fit of shoes of the same nominal size can vary quite a bit. The problem for a local retailer is how much to stock. An online retailer can keep more in a central warehouse - or fall back on the the not uncommon “allows 28 days for delivery”. I might as well order it from China myself in that case - and maybe that will the next big thing in retailing.
Online sales are great in some ways, the prices are usually better and you can usually find enough details to know you are getting the right thing. But there is always the guilt feeling that trees died for the packaging, and a CO2-exuding van has to deliver it. Plus the fact that shipping costs put a dent in the savings.
That said, Amazon et al are fantastic are if you in a place with few local shops. I can order things that no local retailer has. Or even from another country, since I can use Amazon Germany to deliver to Poland. The only thing is that there are some items that cannot be shipped to another country, and some retailers won’t either.
Buying on line is all well and good when you know what it is you’re ordering. However, I prefer to see what I’m buying first and I can’t even imagine buying clothes or shoes that I can’t try on first.
He did buy the hat, but they didn’t say for how much. But the difference in this case is that this was not your run of the mill clothing shop selling commodity ball caps. It was a high end milliner. There is absolutely a balance that has to be struck when identifying your profit margin but there is also such a thing as identifying your market. There is evidence that the proliferation of “Lids” stores (and shopping online) has cut into the market for boutique shops like this one, but maybe that is part of the next trend in retail. I.e. maybe the coming trend is going to move back to customers willing to pay for personal service instead of pinching pennies until they squeal.
Even if not, there is room for both markets in the economy.
It seems like some of the malls around here are trying to reinvent themselves as more entertainment destinations rather than just shopping destinations. More trendy resturants, escape rooms, that sort of thing, and fewer retail stores.
I have had that happen once or twice when ordering products online. It showed up a few weeks later and appeared to have been shipped directly from China. One time it was from some other online store, but it’s happened with certain Amazon Marketplace sellers as well.
I once asked the person in the plumbing department where the teflon tape was. He had no idea what I was talking about. I eventually found it and showed it to him. He didn’t care.
And a bunch of other stories like that.
The people running Home Depot have no idea how badly their “get the cheapest warm bodies we can find” policy is hurting them.
What’s been possible for a while is for the consumer to get a whole body scan which allows the manufacturer to make clothes to fit. Obviously this was possible back in the day when a person went to a tailor, was measured and clothes sewn to fit. But new technology allows this to happen at a distance. I think I even saw a company on Shark Tank that had an iPhone app that could measure a person for custom clothing. And if the sewing and assembly of the clothing can be automated, it might be affordable to more people.
Would you have spent more money if the employee knew where the teflon tape was?
These policies only hurt them if customers go elsewhere to spend their money. It does happen, but customers are VERY forgiving of shoddy service if they can save a couple of bucks.
Years ago the big empty space in town near two major cross streets was slated to have a mall built there. It was all coming together until it was not, when a “major retailer” rumored to be Macys, backed out of the deal and the whole plan fell apart. The city leaders got creative and decided to try for an “outdoor mall with no anchor”. So, that is what was built on the site and lo-and-behold, the thing is a success. Lots of restaurants, a movie theater, and gasp a bookstore that has been there since the beginning. They have been adding other tenants like Whole Foods and a few chain restaurants to the mix, along with an aquarium. No fast food. It is a popular place to hang-out on Friday and Saturday nights. Sure, most of the stuff you can buy there you can also get online, but there are not many empty spaces, so something is working (foot traffic).
I am not sure it is still called a mall, maybe one of those “lifestyle centers,” in the parlance of our time. I think it was the right call and the city dodged a bullet.
My understanding is that, once upon a time, Home Depot did strive to have at least some associates who were particularly knowedgeable about home improvement – they liked to hire semi-retired contractors and handymen, so that customers could actually get advice in-store.
But, those associates tended to cost more, and at some point (at least a decade ago, and probably longer than that), Home Depot largely got rid of those kinds of employees.
The major successful mall here has been upgrading and renovating and the successful stores seem to be:
Restaurants with experience beyond simple sit down eating, such as outside cafe areas, play areas for kids, sports bar sections, etc.
Shop-a-tainment like Build-a-Bear that can’t be replicated online.
Physical storefronts that can be loss-leaders for online value stream, e.g. Apple.