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There is, despite what's been written here, no "breakdown" of the wholesale-retail model for revenue, except in the minds of lazy editors such as whoever edited

There is, despite what's been written here, no "breakdown" of the wholesale-retail model for revenue, except in the minds of lazy editors such as whoever edited this piece. Brick and mortar sales exceed online sales by nine to one. Obviously the trend line is moving away from brick and mortar, and equally as obvious, at least in the commercial real estate industry, the US is way, way overbuilt with retail. So closures will continue, and articles featuring the "apocalypse" premise will continue, and at the end of ten years, brick and mortar...will exceed online by maybe 8 to 1. That said, the article central premise is sound. Designed experiences in surviving retail space are going to get deeper and more numerous.

jessriedel 9y ago
Your points seem mostly logically separate from those in the article. (You may have extrapolated too much from the title.) The author is arguing that Nike and other high-profile brands will move to direct-to-consumer sales rather than using intermediate wholesalers. But he explicitly includes Nike-branded brick-and-mortar shops as an example of this shift. He's not arguing on brick-and-mortar vs. online.
- hosh 9y ago
  More then that, there is an inversion: The experiential retailers are actually media channels and gets compensated with promoting the brand. That is, Nike shifts from being a vendor of the retailer to a client of the experiential retailer. That neatly addresses the growing practice where a brand consumer goes into a physical location and then purchases from online. In other words, the inversion makes the brick and mortar vs retailer dichotomy meaningless in terms of sales. It's kinda like what Tesla has already been doing. What is not said in the article: the role of Amazon in squeezing traditional retailers from the othet side; the continued erosion of broadcast advertising.
at-fates-hands 9y ago
> the US is way, way overbuilt with retail. Holy mother THIS. Post 2008, every city I've lived in or have visited you see gutted strip malls everywhere. Areas that were awash in stores during the last decade of economic boom are now ghost towns or worse since a lot of them were built up to support all the new housing developments. It's a double hit when these developments go bust and then the surrounding retailers go under with them. Two years ago I was pondering opening up a skatepark and I couldn't believe how much commercial real estate was available. The owners were desperate to get a client into their buildings, it was unreal.

jessriedel 9y ago

Your points seem mostly logically separate from those in the article. (You may have extrapolated too much from the title.) The author is arguing that Nike and other high-profile brands will move to direct-to-consumer sales rather than using intermediate wholesalers. But he explicitly includes Nike-branded brick-and-mortar shops as an example of this shift. He's not arguing on brick-and-mortar vs. online.

hosh 9y ago
More then that, there is an inversion: The experiential retailers are actually media channels and gets compensated with promoting the brand. That is, Nike shifts from being a vendor of the retailer to a client of the experiential retailer. That neatly addresses the growing practice where a brand consumer goes into a physical location and then purchases from online. In other words, the inversion makes the brick and mortar vs retailer dichotomy meaningless in terms of sales. It's kinda like what Tesla has already been doing. What is not said in the article: the role of Amazon in squeezing traditional retailers from the othet side; the continued erosion of broadcast advertising.

at-fates-hands 9y ago

> the US is way, way overbuilt with retail. Holy mother THIS. Post 2008, every city I've lived in or have visited you see gutted strip malls everywhere. Areas that were awash in stores during the last decade of economic boom are now ghost towns or worse since a lot of them were built up to support all the new housing developments. It's a double hit when these developments go bust and then the surrounding retailers go under with them. Two years ago I was pondering opening up a skatepark and I couldn't believe how much commercial real estate was available. The owners were desperate to get a client into their buildings, it was unreal.