Retail Collapse 2019: Bezos realized that marriage is a form of union

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Retail Collapse 2019: Bezos realized that marriage is a form of union

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Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

glowing-fish posted:

1. Low wages. Many of these businesses keep prices low by keeping wages low. Employees also have little job security or benefits, and because the chains are run nationally, there is little personal loyalty to the employees.

While I don't doubt that the wages are low, are they lower than non-big-box retail? Also I think there are some that are known for having okay wages, like Costco.

quote:

3. Destroying neighborhood and town character. Big box stores often destroy local businesses and downtown areas, turning cities into a bifurcated downtown and a highway interchange full of retail that has little community interaction.

You're not wrong, but the reason they destroy them is because consumers prefer them. Specifically, consumers have a tendency to prefer low prices and convenience over more nebulous qualities like 'character'.

ToxicSlurpee posted:

Brick and mortar stores for a hell of a lot of goods are just dying. This is especially true of media; instead of storing it on some physical medium now you can just download it. Way easier and the thing never wears out.

Yeah, the only physical media I buy any more are cartridges for old consoles, the occasional book for my wife (but most books even she buys are still ebooks), and kids' books. We hate the feeling of having too much stuff, and digital media is great for that because you can buy as much as you want without your home feeling cluttered and overwhelmed. If only I could do the same for random kitchen appliances.

# ¿ Dec 5, 2016 12:42

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 05:17

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

quote:

I get decorations can be nice, but most of it is absolute poo poo in quality. I'd rather a nice handmade thing with some soul put into it than a thousand faux art pieces.

I kind of feel like we're moving towards a two-tiered system where most big box type stuff like electronics or media you get online, and then people will go to local places for stuff where they care about having more character/charm.

# ¿ Dec 5, 2016 16:15

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Only semi-related to this discussion, but interesting enough to warrant a crosspost: Amazon just announced a checkout-less retail store - https://www.amazon.com/b?node=16008589011

quote:

What is Amazon Go?
Amazon Go is a new kind of store with no checkout required. We created the world�s most advanced shopping technology so you never have to wait in line. With our Just Walk Out Shopping experience, simply use the Amazon Go app to enter the store, take the products you want, and go! No lines, no checkout. (No, seriously.)

How does Amazon Go work?
Our checkout-free shopping experience is made possible by the same types of technologies used in self-driving cars: computer vision, sensor fusion, and deep learning. Our Just Walk Out technology automatically detects when products are taken from or returned to the shelves and keeps track of them in a virtual cart. When you�re done shopping, you can just leave the store. Shortly after, we�ll charge your Amazon account and send you a receipt.

So not only is Amazon crushing existing big box stores via online shopping, now they're going to move in on their brick and mortar turf as well.

# ¿ Dec 5, 2016 16:34

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Inferior Third Season posted:

This sounds loving terrible. Now instead of a cashier going one-by-one through my things at a checkout register, I'll have to do it myself at my car when loading it up to make sure I didn't get charged for something I picked up but didn't set back in place just perfectly enough for the sensor.

Paradoxish posted:

I'm pretty sure this is something Sam's Club has rolled out nationwide at this point and it's pretty great. I have no idea why Amazon decided to go with a more complex solution for the same end result. I find it kind of interesting that phone apps are basically doing an end run around things like self checkout and touchscreen fast food kiosks.

I mean yeah if it's inconsistent that'll suck, but if it works well then it reduces the amount of friction in the shopping experience. If it actually works like it looks in the video that'd be awesome.

From a UX perspective, "grab thing off shelf" is a lot better than "grab thing off shelf, pull out phone, rotate object until code is visible, align phone camera to code". Only a small annoyance, but one that you have to repeat times however many things you buy.

That said the Sam's Club system still sounds way better than lines.

Cicero fucked around with this message at 17:48 on Dec 5, 2016

# ¿ Dec 5, 2016 17:32

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Star Man posted:

Man, I sure do wish that the people that grow and raise our food, mine our energy, and transport our goods all exploded into bloodmist because they vote for people I don't like and love in places I think are boring.

Good point that's exactly what everyone is here is saying

# ¿ Dec 6, 2016 12:25

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Inferior Third Season posted:

Making lists and having others fetch the things I want instead of getting them myself

You literally just described delivery, did you not notice that? You don't even have to be obscenely wealthy to take advantage of it, y'know!

# ¿ Dec 6, 2016 18:59

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

CityLab has an article on the retail meltdown: https://www.citylab.com/work/2017/04/whats-causing-the-retail-meltdown-of-2017/522600/

tl;dr - People are simply buying more stuff online than they used to, America built way too many malls, Americans are shifting their spending from materialism to meals out with friends (and other 'experiences')

# ¿ Apr 11, 2017 11:17

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

I have the opposite problem people are discussing, where are all the clothes for skinny dudes. In the states seemed like the only B&M place that was worth bothering with was Uniqlo, which is odd since there are a fair number of Asians stateside these days.

A Buttery Pastry posted:

I'm pretty sure they haven't invented clothes that can't be worn by ugly people.

Absolutely, but you have a relatively higher confidence that someone is unattractive if they're overweight/obese.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2017 15:44

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:

So retail is in free fall for some partially unknowable reason and the retail sector employs more Americans, percentage wise, than ever before: has there been anybody talking about how this could lead to Bad Stuff?

Certain types of B&M retail are in a free fall, not retail as a whole. As the CityLab articles says,

quote:

The reality is that overall retail spending continues to grow steadily, if a little meagerly.

# ¿ Apr 13, 2017 11:03

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Actually, companies hire people when demand is high enough to necessitate additional employees. The more you know!

# ¿ Apr 13, 2017 12:10

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Glass of Milk posted:

It's probably a positive in places like San Diego which can use the land for housing (though that has it's own downsides)

Coastal California desperately needs more housing yesterday, what's the downside?

# ¿ Apr 24, 2017 10:50

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

OwlFancier posted:

Shopping parks are often terribly positioned. Converting them to housing would be lovely housing with no transport access.

Hmm, I would think this would be less of an issue in a place like San Diego; we're not talking super low density suburban strip malls in the middle of nowhere.

fake edit: I just looked at Google Maps and San Diego proper covers a much larger geographical area that I had thought. But even in that case, seems like you could still use this as an opportunity, create some denser mixed-use developments and run buses to and from there.

# ¿ Apr 24, 2017 15:03

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

HEY NONG MAN posted:

Public facing. There is a special parking structure you pull into in front then someone comes out with your groceries and you drive away.

I'm kind of surprised they have a person do this instead of a conveyor belt or something. Seems like that'd be a way easier thing to automate than drone deliveries.

# ¿ Apr 25, 2017 16:07

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

OwlFancier posted:

Are you familiar with a company called Dahiir Insaat?

No?

# ¿ Apr 25, 2017 16:57

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Glass of Milk posted:

Increased water use and transportation/infrastructure issues, mostly. One rainy season isn't gonna turn around the fact we live in a desert.

As has been beaten to death elsewhere, the water issues California has mainly stem from agriculture, not residential use. Plus it sounds like we're talking about relatively dense developments, the kind that are pretty light on water anyway.

As far as transportation/infrastructure goes, same thing, denser = better. Much better to have apartment complexes in cities than push the growth to sprawling suburban tracts at the edges.

# ¿ Apr 26, 2017 18:39

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Amused to Death posted:

To respond to a previous comment, if anyone is interested in what a former mall repurposed into apartments might look like, New Haven has your answer!

https://betweentworocks.com/welcome-new-havens-strangest-apartment-building/

Looks pretty inoffensive except for that inner courtyard, ugh what happened. Looks totally phoned-in.

Glass of Milk posted:

Denser is better for transportation, but only if the cities involved actively develop the transportation modes. Southern California doesn't have the best track record of doing that.

Yeah I dunno about San Diego but LA has actually been quite good about building out their rail system lately, it's just that they have a lot of catching up to do.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2017 15:48

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Tiny Brontosaurus posted:

Lol J. Crew isn't hipster. What is it about this specific word that's so slippery for goons?

Most other derogatory terms for people have become no-nos if you're progressive so people latch onto the few that are still acceptable: hipster, yuppie, techbro, etc. which ends up with them being all-purpose terms that mean whatever the speaker feels like at the moment. Hipster is the worst one, it basically just means "young urban person I don't like".

# ¿ May 2, 2017 07:51

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Tiny Brontosaurus posted:

That's a huge topic! For one, it's really expensive to make quality clothes. Fabric is expensive, and the looms that good-quality fabric used to be made of are gradually going offline, and natural fabrics (which make better clothing in most use cases) are affected by rising costs of agriculture and labor. Clothing also doesn't automate as well as other things might, since well-draped and tailored pieces have lots of fiddly little details that need a human touch - that's why cuts are getting simpler and boxier like I was complaining about earlier.

Clothing purchases are also, as we discussed a lot today, motivated by a lot more than cost and utility. A lot of people are locked into a cycle of purchasing fast fashion, because they want something current-looking but can't afford designer clothes, so they buy some flimsy garbage from Forever 21, but then it falls apart after a few wears and they haven't had enough time to save up for something nice so they buy cheap again, and repeat. Then you factor in brand loyalty, how customers see themselves, what brands they have heard of/have access to, what occasions they dress for, on and on. It's some of the most complex marketing in the world.

There's illogic on the manufacturer side too, largely focused on who they want to dress and what they want their customers to think about the brand. The vast, vast, vast majority of clothing brands want to sell to slim young white people and no one else. Even if you point out that they could have another niche of the market virtually to themselves, they won't touch it. Brands would rather sell a lot of things to a small market than a few things to a large market.

You seem to know a lot about clothing manufacture, so is there any sizable chain that sells well-made non-niche clothes for reasonable prices?

Also I do most of my clothes shopping at Uniqlo and after reading your post find myself curious how they rank on the third-world-labor-exploitativeness scale.

# ¿ May 3, 2017 02:51

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:

This is way off the topic of the thread but how would you actually ban MLMs in the USA? What laws at the federal or state level would make a difference?

Require any business that uses the 'downline'/'upline' pattern to report how much money it takes in from "independent distributors" vs actual customers, and ban those whose percentage of the former is too high.

# ¿ May 6, 2017 13:42

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

How is Searsguy still CEO? If he's so obviously incompetent, why hasn't the board removed him?

# ¿ May 15, 2017 07:27

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Mr.Radar posted:

TechCrunch has an interesting article on what makes Amazon so different from their competitors and why they will likely continue to eat the rest of the retail sector:

The whole article is worth a read.

This is a good article, the main thing I disagree with is that I think it would be very difficult for retail incumbents to catch up, tech-wise. Yeah on the surface it sounds simple enough, Walmart has enough money so surely they can just buy/acquihire whatever they need right? But I think being competent in consumer-facing technology to the extent that Amazon/Google/Facebook/etc. are would require a massive cultural change for a company like Walmart, and even if that culture exists in, say, a startup they acquire (like Jet), usually that kind of culture gets obliterated in short order after the acquisition.

# ¿ May 16, 2017 07:00

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Jeffrey of YOSPOS posted:

Amazon doesn't do any of the crazy perks that google does which buys the latter a lot of good will for not very much money/employee. They still want crazy hours out of people.

lol no they don't

Like I'm sure there are specific teams that do crazy hours, but as a general rule if anything Google work life balance seems to be pretty great. At least from what I've seen.

# ¿ May 19, 2017 07:54

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

axeil posted:

Oh yes, all the old school SA stories are fake, but we had some really good fiction writers around here back in the day.

P-p-powerbook wasn't fake was it??

# ¿ May 26, 2017 19:56

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

side_burned posted:

I am morbidly curious to see what Amazon would do if drugs ever get legalized.

Probably nothing until public sentiment was overwhelmingly cool with said drugs.

# ¿ May 30, 2017 08:10

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Yes, it's technically possible. It's just cumbersome.

And using Amazon ain't any worse for the environment than driving somewhere yourself anyway. Possibly it's better.

# ¿ May 31, 2017 13:46

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

RBC posted:

Technically possible? People have been walking to the grocery store with these things for decades. I'm guessing you just live a lovely american city where you have to drive everywhere. Too bad.

I live in Munich at the moment, but yes in most American cities not-driving is pretty painful.

Deadly Ham Sandwich posted:

I just strap all my groceries to my bike's pannier rack. I got crazy thighs though, so this may not be practical for you.

Biking is good and cool, but I think a bigger issue than fitness for most is that almost all of the US has awful bike infrastructure. Full bike-unism now imo

# ¿ Jun 1, 2017 09:03

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

The Amazon change is cool. But if you are on EBT, then is $4 a month really going to change your shopping habits?

The difference is actually five dollars a month.

quote:

Especially since most food products are far more expensive on Amazon than in the grocery store.

Yeah, but this is probably still useful for poor people for all the non-food items that are competitively priced/cheaper on Amazon.

# ¿ Jun 7, 2017 14:08

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

ISeeCuckedPeople posted:

Going by this thread there's not a single form of shopping center of commerce you would like

I mean this is D&D, a fair number of goons here want FULL COMMUNISM NOW etc so any form of private commerce is unacceptable to them.

# ¿ Jun 13, 2017 14:07

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

karthun posted:

If only there was a place to look this up.

https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS

The US worked 1790 hours per worker in 2015 just above the OECD average of 1766. Japan worked 1719 and South Korea worked 2113 hours.

I've read these stats before too, but IIRC Japanese bigcorps have people working a LOT of hours off the books. I can only speak for larger companies but it's well-known that salarymen work like crazy.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2017 23:23

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

LanceHunter posted:

Getting back to Lifestyle centers, I'm a bit surprised that no one has talked about the condos that often accompany them. We have The Domain here in Austin, which is basically an outdoor mall with some condos sprinkled next to/on top of a few places. A acquaintance actually lived above the Tiffany & Co for a couple of years. Now, why anyone would want to live in a mall is beyond me (other than making a obvious Kendrick Lamar reference).

Mixed-use development is actually good and cool. Okay yeah being above a Tiffany is useless, but being right above a Trader Joe's or a great [ethnicity] restaurant would be rad.

# ¿ Jun 15, 2017 20:23

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Mixed-use development could also mean office and retail in the same building, that's pretty common in "downtown" areas.

# ¿ Jun 16, 2017 00:49

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

In Japan there are vending machines for everything all over the place and it owns. More vending machines please.

# ¿ Jun 18, 2017 21:18

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

got any sevens posted:

Being a cashier sucks anyway, no big loss. Just give everyone a mincome instead

On that note: http://www.businessinsider.de/hawaii-basic-income-bill-2017-6?r=US&IR=T

quote:

The bill has two major provisions. First, it declares that all families in Hawaii are entitled to basic financial security. "As far as I'm told, it's the first time any state has made such a pronouncement," wrote Lee. The second provision establishes a number of government offices "to analyze our state's economy and find ways to ensure all families have basic financial security, including an evaluation of different forms of a full or partial universal basic income."

Great, right?

quote:

The congressman thanked "redditors" in his post, as he said the site became his first resource in considering UBI, and added a Reddit-standard TL;DR at the end: "The State of Hawaii is going to begin evaluating universal basic income."

NOOOOooooooooooo

Just kidding, there are plenty of perfectly fine subreddits

# ¿ Jun 19, 2017 00:06

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:

I"m a boring shut-in and even I think that a good waitress or clerk or whatever is part of the experience. The future sucks.

Waiters/waitresses will still exist, but they'll definitely be a luxury.

I think the interesting thing about automation in the kitchen is that when enough of it is done by robots, it may well be cheaper overall to pick up food to go (even assuming you have a minimum standard for decent ingredients) than to cook at home, since the auto-restaurant will have economies of scale.

# ¿ Jun 19, 2017 00:15

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:

I"m a boring shut-in and even I think that a good waitress or clerk or whatever is part of the experience. The future sucks.

I wonder if in D&D 100 years from now this comment will be hopelessly bougie or even creepy.

"Ol' Grampa NerdyMcNerd, couldn't enjoy food unless he had a servant waiting on him hand and foot."

Cicero fucked around with this message at 01:39 on Jun 19, 2017

# ¿ Jun 19, 2017 00:32

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Is the area struggling as a whole, overbuilding, or is it office jobs moving downtown?

# ¿ Jun 25, 2017 15:03

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/25/business/economy/amazon-retail-jobs-pennsylvania.html

NYTimes posted:

In Towns Already Hit by Steel Mill Closings, a New Casualty: Retail Jobs

Small cities in the Midwest and Northeast are particularly vulnerable. When major industries left town, retail accounted for a growing share of the job market in places like Johnstown, Decatur, Ill., and Saginaw, Mich. Now, the work force is getting hit a second time, and there is little to fall back on.

Moreover, while stores in these places are shedding jobs because of e-commerce, e-commerce isn’t absorbing these workers. Growth in e-commerce jobs like marketing and engineering, while strong, is clustered around larger cities far away. Rural counties and small metropolitan areas account for about 23 percent of traditional American retail employment, but they are home to just 13 percent of e-commerce positions.

# ¿ Jun 26, 2017 08:49

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

But people are working on artificially grown organs? IIRC we already have artificially-grown bladders (admittedly the simplest example).

# ¿ Jun 26, 2017 15:08

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

PT6A posted:

Why not provide a free-market solution to the parking problem by increasing the cost of parking until there's always some availability out of the present on-street spaces?

This is exactly what Seattle does and it's a good idea. It means parking availability is more consistent for those who need it, and reduces congestion from people circling around looking for a place to park.

# ¿ Jun 27, 2017 17:21

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 05:17

Cicero: Dec 17, 2003; Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

It's definitely true that America needs much better transit, walkability, and bikability. Part of why it sucks to be poor in America is that in most cities cars are the only sensible form of transportation, and cars are inherently expensive things.

# ¿ Jun 27, 2017 17:24

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Retail Collapse 2019: Bezos realized that marriage is a form of union

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