Commentary
Whole server racks (the equivalent of whole forests in the print era) have been sacrificed to stories about “The Retail Apocalypse” and the “Death of Retail.” All the stories present a binary view: retail is dead; retail isn’t dead.
The truth lies somewhere in between.
Retail, broadly speaking, is doing well. But retail covers a wide array of vendors and products, from restaurants and grocery stores to consumer products like drug stores, auto dealerships, shoe stores, clothing stores, book stores furniture stores, pet stores, and too many other kinds of stores to count. And don’t forget that retail includes department stores like Macy’s and e-commerce from giants like Amazon to individual vendors and small businesses who sell on Etsy. Finally, retail includes brick-and-mortar retailers with physical stores selling to customers in-person, as well as e-commerce, like Walmart and Target….