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Many of these large stores are now going under as they either move to emulate Amazon or get crushed by Amazon. In their wake they're abandoning their buildings which are now turning into blighted hulks. A lot of large retailers also are dependent on commercial corridors or shopping centers to drive traffic to their shops and they rely on the presence of a high density of large box retailers in one place in order to generate the traffic they need. When a single large box goes under, the drop in traffic causes a sudden a precipitous drop in sales for all of the surrounding boxes. The creation of these developments is highly incentivized because most cities and towns see 100% of the sales tax go to the local governance. This is why local officials love to rubberstamp or even pay for any kind of high volume or high ticket-price (think car lots) development because they see more of that sales tax revenue than any other type of development. That being said, when you look at the circulation of revenues and profits, local independents recirculate more of their revenues and profits (think wages, buying locally for their supply chains and maintenance, and taxes) by a large margin than any big box retailer or Amazon I think that the US retail space is actually in a prime position to see local independent retailers make a resurgence. The modern retail space is incompatible with the big box store model and the only reason they're holding on anymore is because of favorable tax subsidies.
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Dec 4, 2016 01:23
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I mean, nobody is really arguing that massive retailers are going away, but I think a good argument can be made for the death of the big box store and its subsequent replacement with small shopping corridors filled with boutique shops stocked with difficult-to-find-online and small run production goods. Additionally, the benefit to the local cities and communities (financially and socially) is as good or better than what that city would net from the high-volume sales tax revenue that goes along with snagging a big box store. The employment gains (in number) are also superior or equal to shopping corridors.
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Dec 6, 2016 02:50
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OwlFancier posted:Assuming you have a ready supply of poncy rich fuckers to shop at the boutique shops and their absurd markups and you don't mind everyone who needed to go to the big store for basic goods doing without, sure. The argument is that on-demand, internet delivery, and small-square-footage "essentials" chains will handle the basics (walgreens and target have been doing this) and the volume (dispensing the need for big boxes.) Those who needed to go to the big store for basic things will still get those basic things, probably from the same big store - they just won't go there. Pretty much every single bulk goods store and big box store has been rolling out a delivery service of some sort and the demand is such that even the firms that aren't doing that themselves are seeing online concierge services that do that for people (instacart/google express). Since nearly all online revenue (something like 90%) and sales taxes don't get returned to the municipality, cities will have look elsewhere for that revenue. El Mero Mero fucked around with this message at 06:12 on Dec 6, 2016 |
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Dec 6, 2016 06:08
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fishmech posted:What? I see that all the time. The nearest supermarket has the high capacity style self-checkout lanes, with huge bagging areas and a belt. The current hope is that machine learning algorithms + a camera will replace scanning - at which point you can just point a camera at a thing and product match it. If they can get that working you could ditch the checkout counter entirely. I'm sure it won't play out cleanly though as much as I'm sure that grocers learned nothing from the overstated promises of self-checkout.
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May 10, 2017 06:54
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RuanGacho posted:We have a problem where there's basically two kinds of commercial space available, one is old side of town owned by all the same guy who whines when the newer side of town gets any kind of activity plotted in it, but he doesn't do anything to keep up his spaces, but is generally affordable to exist in. He's not at 100% capacity any more because he won't upgrade and maintain the buildings anything more than code/health regulation requires. One quasi-solution that I've seen cities in my area do to address this has been to relax leasing and permitting requirements in vacant corridors to allow for temporary pop-up stores. Many landlords don't want to commit to long-term commercial leases if they think that property valuation trends are on their side. They're so afraid of locking in a below-market rate for someone that they'd prefer a vacancy. The business owners get to sell, the landlords get to keep their flexibility and earn fees on space usage.
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Jun 4, 2017 06:28
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Good on Amazon, but it also makes business sense because it's a great way to gently caress over Walmart and steal their customer base at the moment when Walmart is exploring doing on-demand delivery.
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Jun 7, 2017 14:39
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Sure, and before that they had someone stand in the store and go "huh, looks like people go right to the candy isle, lets put some candy up front" or whatever. But precise real time movement tracking of "xae's iphone" across every trip to every target is some pretty huge new tools that wasn't really a thing before. Which really makes you wonder if those new tools are generating any insights more profound or powerful than that observer. Not sure if there's a lot of room left for innovation around floor/inventory layouts
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Jun 17, 2017 23:08
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Think about how big a deal it was when websites went from simple hit counters and page load bar graphs to modern analytics. Think of all the teams of people that study exactly how many milliseconds a person is engaged with each page of a site and the exact workflow people use and exactly what page causes them to leave the page and stuff. Online shopping is absolutely new terrain though and there was no prior set of experience to really draw from. The insights that analytics gave to Amazon in that space were incredibly impactful not just because of the tools but also because they were prospecting an unmined landscape. Brick and mortar retail has lots of prior research. There may not exist opportunities for dramatic disruptive gains to be had in this space outside of hoping on monopoly pricing. El Mero Mero fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Jun 18, 2017 |
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Jun 18, 2017 01:38
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Paradoxish posted:
For those not in the bay area: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWeocXaIPMo&hd=1 it's alright
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Jun 18, 2017 23:18
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Blut posted:
Really both generations are getting screwed, because those pensions were often carved out under the assumption of a world with expanding governments bringing on new people who could/would pay the way for retirees. Instead, almost no new people are being brought on, or there's a "2-4 out, 1 in" situation where retirees aren't replaced. It's a structural situation that's slowly strangling most governments since without new employee contributions offsetting retiree benefits, governments are having to fund more of those retirees out of their operating budgets. This in turn makes them less able to provide services, hire new people, etc and that drives public backlash which cuts budgets even further.
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Jul 14, 2017 18:06
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His Divine Shadow posted:Speaking of retail. This weekend we did our yearly Christmas shopping, which entailed going into the city and a lot of the more "upscale" shopping malls downtown, and drat it's such a depressing place to visit. This is bougie paradise apparently, glitzy shops and restaurants and all that kind of stuff people are supposed to like and want from life. Except me apparently. To me everything felt wrong, or crass, like I was in some kind of 80s movie about future capitalist dystopian societies. A pervading, dread sense of "keeping up with the joneses" perhaps how I'd describe it. Horrible feel to the place. So what you're saying is Christmas is alive and well? Close the thread folks, retail is alive!
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Dec 4, 2017 19:24
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