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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

#351

Post by debacle »

andrewla wrote: post #233

Articles like this are starting to ring little bells for me. There's an argument that the government's reaction to the 1999 financial crisis (and the 1998 Russian bond crisis, which figures in) is what inflated the housing bubble [1], which started to show cracks in 2006 and 2007 (with the Bear Stearns fund collapses) and then went full-bore once things started unwinding in 2008 as home prices started to fall, and th…

> the question is what new bubble we funneled capital into

Overvalued tech unicorns.

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

#352

Post by j_s »

cwbrandsma wrote: post #122
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…

I'm not disagreeing completely, but your location might be influencing your answer. I live in the northern portion of the USA, we get freezing winters and blistering summers. Come mid-winter...I am not going downtown to walk around outside, we don't hang out outside (unless we are talking winter sports, and then FULLY clothed). In summer, there needs to be shade. Fall and spring, we get wet. But really, it seems like…

Malls are a great place to walk (especially for toddlers and the elderly) in the winter time!

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

#353

Post by rimunroe »

VLM wrote: post #288
georgeecollins wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not going to defend malls, but clearly there needs to be some kind of market place where people can encounter things they don't expect. We are already experiencing a media landscape with a filter bubble. Views become more narrow and extreme. You are going to need to have a place where you see things you think you wouldn't buy or want, otherwise your experience of world is going to get more narrow.

Amazon is extremely good at that, and they have a strong financial motivation to do so. I'll agree with and extend your remarks on a tangent that at one point in human history literacy was nice but not required to participate in the economy. Currently shopping by catalog and spec and datasheet is for the cognitive elite like engineers, but soon enough its going to be a required new higher minimum of economic particip…

> Currently shopping by catalog and spec and datasheet is for the cognitive elite like engineers, but soon enough its going to be a required new higher minimum of economic participation.

Sounds like you you're mistaking "wealthy people" for "the cognitive elite"! The shopping behaviors you're describing are just those of people who have either the time or capital to spend trying to get marginally better stuff.

> [...] soon enough its going to be a required new higher minimum of economic participation. You'll pick out your next bicycle by reading technical manuals and holding a ruler up to your leg, or you'll fail miserably at buying a bicycle.

I don't know what kind of bicycle shopping you're envisioning, but it sounds pretty damn weird to me. It's kind of hard to buy a bike that just doesn't work at all for most people. Even if your bike is several sizes off, it's just going to be more obnoxious to pedal. I'm in Boston, and I see tons of people commute around on bikes which really don't fit them at all and they do just fine. Even the crappiest bike is leagues better than walking

Also, I don't know how many people currently buy their bikes online who aren't already really into cycling vs people who buy them used or at a brick and mortar store, but I doubt it's high compared to, say, clothes.

[Edit]

> Just like its sad that illiterate or innumerate people get screwed in todays economy, people who can't shop like an engineer are going to get screwed in coming decades.

The type of shopping behavior you're describing is a luxury of the rich, not a necessity for most people. If you were to say, "not-wealthy people will be screwed over in the decades to come" I'd agree and point out that that's already the case.

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

#354

Post by matwood »

cwbrandsma wrote: post #122
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…

I'm not disagreeing completely, but your location might be influencing your answer. I live in the northern portion of the USA, we get freezing winters and blistering summers. Come mid-winter...I am not going downtown to walk around outside, we don't hang out outside (unless we are talking winter sports, and then FULLY clothed). In summer, there needs to be shade. Fall and spring, we get wet. But really, it seems like…

Some weather can be worked around though. Some of Denver's more popular shopping areas are outdoor type malls. You just have to design them with the weather in mind with things like fire pits and heaters to use in the winter.

Denver gets very little precipitation so rain is something that generally is not an issue though.

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

#355

Post by 3pt14159 »

metalliqaz wrote: post #289
3pt14159 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

North Americans are too soft. I live in Toronto and it's wonderful to have nice streets that you can walk and bike on, even at ±30C.

I thought Toronto was part of North America... Also, doesn't Montreal have the Underground City specifically for staying out of the cold in the winter?

Yes and many people here, especially outside of the downtown / in the GTA, act like being outside for an hour is unbearable and that suburbs and cars are the only fix. They aren't.

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

#356

Post by gorbachev »

ForRealsies wrote: post #299
fsloth wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's so weird. We in northern europe have no problem in letting our kids roam (Finland, but I presume the situation is similar in at least scandinavia).

What is a homogeneous culture, Trebek.

I grew up in them Scandinavian countries, and my brother and I often spent the entire weekend outside out of sight from my parents. My earliest memory of that is when I was 7 years old.

I now live in the US and have kids about the same age.

The issue is not homogeneous culture or any other thing people with no brains come up with, but traffic density, at least in my case.

Where I used to live we could roam without having to cross dangerous streets. Where I live now, there's traffic everywhere and cars don't give a shit about people on foot, so my kids do not roam.

When I was a kid, we used to have vast areas to play safely. I just looked on Google Maps and the cross-country ski route we used to regularly take on weekends is 4 miles long. We had to cross ONE street. I used to bike about 10 miles one way, by myself, when I was a little older and keep on bike lanes the entire trip.

We also used to have large play areas in the backyard of every home I ever had. The bigger ones were the size of a typical New York borough block. We didn't have to leave our homes to get to a playground, or a park...we had one right outside of our door.

Obviously this sort of thing is easier to do / plan for when the entire country has less people than the city of New York.

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

#357

Post by ethbro »

wahern wrote: post #296
tspike wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no way the returns on investing in making the mall a pleasurable place to hang out in the short term outweigh the costs, but if people depended on malls as part of their area's social fabric, I doubt they would be facing this kind of longer-term decline.

People do depend on malls as part of their area's social fabric. That's more true today than when Mall Rats was filmed, even though it's less cool now. It's the social fabric itself, not just the malls, which is disintegrating. Suburbia was never economically sustainable.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14400448

This has been discussed here before, and seems to be a bit of a blind spot for HN. Imagine you live in a place where there's only one "mall" nearby: that's most of America (geographically speaking).

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

#358

Post by taneq »

jacobolus wrote: post #313
fsloth wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's so weird. We in northern europe have no problem in letting our kids roam (Finland, but I presume the situation is similar in at least scandinavia).

I would guess that even in northern Europe there has probably been a substantial reduction of kids’ roaming distance and time spent unsupervised compared to 2 or 3 generations ago. This seems to be a worldwide trend (if not to the same extent in every place). In the US one of the big problems is a culture of legal liability for every possible thing, and a general culture of fearfulness, excuse-making, and ass-coverin…

> more media attention on rare tragedies

I think this is a big one, and not just rare tragedies but distant ones. 40 years ago you heard about the bad things in your village, now the 24 hour news cycle feeds a constant stream of fear from all over the world.

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

#359

Post by Parcissons »

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…

Its the little details in malls, and eveyhwere, that tell you that you are not really wanted. That everyone, just views you as a number, that either goes black or red.

For example hotels- i stayed alon in a double room, and noticed that somebody those two beds apart to so they would not have to do the the sheets on the second one.

Those little, subtle gestures signifying, that you the customer are just another annoying fact one has to put up with in this world. And the malls are full of them. I love places that signify with "waste" that they like my presence.

That small bookstore on the corner, where i buy and order books. I go there, because the salesman will talk about politics and books,often for half an hour. Its a terrible waste and in any place with a CEO, he would be yelled at for a lack of throughput and a failed success at getting me to buy crap.

More then anything, in those malls, i hate the voice that a shop, its people and appearance form.

"Sheep 815 has entered the room, get him sheared in under 3 Mins, abandon instantly when no quick-sale is possible, prevent him from disrupting goods and sales-process." I honestly abhore shop-keepers who think only about the economical side of theire shops. I know it doesent make sense, but hey im the customer- i dont have too.

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

#360

Post by CalRobert »

gorbachev wrote: post #356
ForRealsies wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a homogeneous culture, Trebek.

I grew up in them Scandinavian countries, and my brother and I often spent the entire weekend outside out of sight from my parents. My earliest memory of that is when I was 7 years old. I now live in the US and have kids about the same age. The issue is not homogeneous culture or any other thing people with no brains come up with, but traffic density, at least in my case. Where I used to live we could roam without ha…

My single greatest fear for letting my kid walk free when she's old enough to is that she'll be killed by a driver. This is compounded by the fact that as long as you say "Sorry mate didn't see you" it's OK to kill people with your car

(weird really - can you do that for killing people by any other means?)

My wife and I have semi-seriously considered moving to northern Scandinavia for both this reason and its comparative likelihood of remaining a decent (well, bearable, if only just) place to live in a clathrate-gun scenario.

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