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America’s ‘Retail Apocalypse’ Is Really Just Beginning

bloomberg.com

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

#61

Post by munificent »

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…

The repeated charts all the same size makes it a "small multiple" [1]. Laying them out in a meaningful spatial way is a brilliant idea. I don't know if there's a name for that.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_multiple

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

#62

Post by agumonkey »

ISL wrote: post #40
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.

Google used to provide rare value: large scale of organization of information. They also philanthropically raised standards f the web: way better mail service, map service.

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

#63

Post by toomuchtodo »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #39
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.

My daughter prefers to pick her toys out in person. For everything else, Walmart Pickup is fine (order the day before, order is brought to the car when you arrive).

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

#64

Post by wmeredith »

petra wrote: post #56
hprotagonist wrote: post #2

in general, it is difficult for me to separate a reasonable concern borne of the knowledge that a thriving economy is important from a sense that, so far, the big retail chains that are closing many locations sell junk that i both do not want and think is largely superfluous anyway. Anyone got a reasonable way to synthesize those competing thoughts?

Progress, at least under capitalism, enables(or pushes) more and more people to do stuff that is less and less necessary, because junk is growth and growth is what's capitalism aimed at.

It's a Brave New World.

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

#65

Post by free_everybody »

I've worked at Kohls and JC Penney, and anyone with half a brain who has worked in an entrenched retail chain has seen this writing on the wall for many years. Clothing from these stores are generally out of touch with modern trends. They can't keep up.

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

#66

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#67

Post by muninn_ »

pascalxus wrote: post #60

Malls hold no interest for me whatsoever. There's nothing there worthwhile, other than employment. Malls have nothing: no libraries, no Good Cafes, no places to hang out, no parks, no museums, no zoos, limited live music, no outdoors. And the few things it does have: like some book stores and places to eat, are all engineered to get you in and out and back to the Mall's singular focus: Spend, spend, spend: shop till…

Agreed. Mall's attempted to remake the idea of a "city center" but because they were largely single use - shopping - and you had to make a special trip to go there versus it being on your way somewhere or within walking distance, they ultimately are going to fail. Some malls are attempting to evolve, to their credit.

Ultimately it's a failing of zoning. You have houses here. business here. shopping here. library (if funded but probably not) over there. But these things should all be intermingled with the exception of manufacturing.

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

#68

Post by wmeredith »

ashark wrote: post #37
gr3yh47 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It makes more sense if you're one of the oligarchs. I mean, not the logic of the argument, but the reasons for supporting it ;)

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

#69

Post by radix07 »

ISL wrote: post #40
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.

Right, but the point is how many jobs does Amazon create delivering all those goods to you compared to say a Sears or Walmart?

The modern day middlemen are doing a better job with way less people. Hence the Retail Apocalypse...

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

#70

Post by Spivak »

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.

Potentially but when you're at a store you can immediately tell the if the store has a good or bad purchasing department. It does provide tangible positive value.

You're silly if you think that the industry isn't already using large data analysis to do this job. There's still plenty of value by having a human at the end of the tunnel to actually interpret it though.

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