Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

America’s ‘Retail Apocalypse’ Is Really Just Beginning

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 406 posts

Re: America’s ‘Retail Apocalypse’ Is Really Just Beginning

#31

Post by sytelus »

brango wrote: post #28
sytelus wrote: post #24

Retail is the prime example of middleman business. The middleman businesses don't produce anything by themselves and attempt to extract profits via information asymmetry and/or some value adds such as geographically closer availability. Eventually both of these should be done by machines. Throughout the history technology has been killing off middleman businesses such as travel agents, insurance agents, stock brokers…

They're aggregators. There's value in going to a single shop to buy everything instead of going to 200 individual suppliers for your weekly shopping.

Aggregation, filtering, sorting, recommendations could be best handled by machines. All businesses specializing in this using human efforts are at grave risk.

Re: America’s ‘Retail Apocalypse’ Is Really Just Beginning

#32

Post by bunderbunder »

wlesieutre wrote: post #25
ewheeler wrote: post #13

The 'Retail jobs growth by state' chart in this article (approx 2/3 down the page) is lovely: one square line chart for each US state, positioned roughly according to geography, all equal in size. I find it very easy to grok compared to choropleth maps and similar charts that attempt to stay true to geography. Unlike other non-map presentations of US state data, this layout preserves ability to spot regional similari…

Are we seeing different charts? Mine is sorted by the percent change (over 2007 to 2017), not geography. Has Rhode Island at the top left, Alaska on middle-right, etc.

It's using a responsive layout. It shows them sorted like that if your browser's width is below a certain size, and the map-style arrangement if it's wider.

Re: America’s ‘Retail Apocalypse’ Is Really Just Beginning

#33

Post by ataturk »

sytelus wrote: post #24

Retail is the prime example of middleman business. The middleman businesses don't produce anything by themselves and attempt to extract profits via information asymmetry and/or some value adds such as geographically closer availability. Eventually both of these should be done by machines. Throughout the history technology has been killing off middleman businesses such as travel agents, insurance agents, stock brokers…

I work for a major wholesaler. I disagree that my company adds "no value." The shops that stock our products don't/can't do this work. Just negotiating prices with overseas suppliers is a big enough value add all by itself.

Re: America’s ‘Retail Apocalypse’ Is Really Just Beginning

#34

Post by Feniks »

Fuck retail. For decades they have been fleecing customers.

Now I'm no longer forced by stores to buy what they happen to have in their inventory. Want that obscure JPN VN? Done, delivered next day.

I do feel bad about people losing their jobs. But the discounters and upmarket stores will always survive.

Re: America’s ‘Retail Apocalypse’ Is Really Just Beginning

#36

Post by excalibur »

brango wrote: post #28
sytelus wrote: post #24

Retail is the prime example of middleman business. The middleman businesses don't produce anything by themselves and attempt to extract profits via information asymmetry and/or some value adds such as geographically closer availability. Eventually both of these should be done by machines. Throughout the history technology has been killing off middleman businesses such as travel agents, insurance agents, stock brokers…

They're aggregators. There's value in going to a single shop to buy everything instead of going to 200 individual suppliers for your weekly shopping.

It's not really relevant, but I'm having a hard time picturing a household that consumes 200 unique items every week. Must be pretty fancy.

Re: America’s ‘Retail Apocalypse’ Is Really Just Beginning

#37

Post by ashark »

gr3yh47 wrote: post #20
Retric wrote: post #3

Retail is dependent on consumer spending. As more stores close the remainder should be more profitable, which should minimize ripple effects.

to take your statement a step further than just retail, I'll say that the entire economy is effectively largely dependent on people spending money. Which is why trickle-down economics has been not working at all for at least a few decades and yet somehow this is still the resoning for tax plans. the idea being that the 1% who has 90% of the country's wealth needs a little more to create jobs (from thin air) whereas t…

"Trickle down" has never made any sense to me. Maybe it's different at big companies, but at small ones 100% of the hiring I've observed goes something like this: "uh oh, we have[1] more business coming in than we can handle, better hire!". Never, ever "welp, we have extra cash, better hire for... uh, some reason". Extra money without an actual need to hire more workers might go into marketing or sales, but only to a (lowish) point.

[1] Usually "we have", but sometimes "we anticipate".

Re: America’s ‘Retail Apocalypse’ Is Really Just Beginning

#38

Post by brango »

sytelus wrote: post #31
brango wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're aggregators. There's value in going to a single shop to buy everything instead of going to 200 individual suppliers for your weekly shopping.

Aggregation, filtering, sorting, recommendations could be best handled by machines. All businesses specializing in this using human efforts are at grave risk.

Yeah but presumably as the end user you'd still want to interface with a single entity, even if behind the scenes they're then aggregating, filtering, etc. But yeah any humans employed by them doing that work are probably at risk.

Re: America’s ‘Retail Apocalypse’ Is Really Just Beginning

#39

Post by lotsofpulp »

Danihan wrote: post #6

imo this comes down to centralization and the popularity of "big box" stores. People generally don't want to go to a specialty store anymore, the toy section at Walmart is fine.

Did they ever want to? I would bet many people prefer the toy to be delivered at home rather than going to Walmart also. Only difference is now we have that option.

Re: America’s ‘Retail Apocalypse’ Is Really Just Beginning

#40

Post by ISL »

sytelus wrote: post #24

Retail is the prime example of middleman business. The middleman businesses don't produce anything by themselves and attempt to extract profits via information asymmetry and/or some value adds such as geographically closer availability. Eventually both of these should be done by machines. Throughout the history technology has been killing off middleman businesses such as travel agents, insurance agents, stock brokers…

Amazon, Facebook, Google, AirBnB, Uber, Match, etcetera are all middlemen.

They provide an interface between parties who wish to exchange information, goods, services, and time.

The nature of middle-people businesses is changing, but they're not going away.

Post reply on HN