38 ms·

AKA: "Mall owners rested on their laurels while online shopping arrived. Those that didn't go bankrupt now realize they need to improve"

dghughes 7y ago
Sears began with catalogues the online shopping of the 1890s. Sears should have been the leader of both malls and online shopping.
- ultrarunner 7y ago
  Oh man, Sears… Sears apparently found a treasure trove of part numbers correlated to product names and decided they would sell any and everything known to man online. That they didn't actually have the product (or know what it was) is completely immaterial— you just click "Add to Cart" and then "Check out!" I remember searching for a datasheet for some really old transistors & ICs I found in my late grandfather's TV-repair parts. Sears was light on details, but offered to sell me some brand new ones despite the company having disappeared a few decades ago! It was a bold strategy, but unfortunately teaching people that your listings are not serious and should be immediately ignored didn't work out in the end. I'm not sure they can pin that on "millennials."
Mediterraneo10 7y ago
How do you improve when you don’t have much room for stock? Mall bookstores were usually extremely constrained for space. There was no way they could compete with an online bookshop that has a whole warehouse full of books, and which can deliver the product straight to do your door in a couple of days. The same could be said for mall CD or DVD shops, with the added pressure that physical media sales dropped drastically as everyone switched to buying online, streaming or YouTube.
- jdietrich 7y ago
  You don't try to out-internet the internet. You focus on your strengths - the sensory experience, retail as leisure, carefully curated selections of delightful products etc. Many retailers are in deep trouble because they've neglected the customer experience, but there's a substantial market opportunity for what one might describe as "chain boutiques". A YouTube influencer can tell me what brand of cosmetics works for them, but they can't pick out something just for me. I can't smell a bar of soap online, I can't feel the texture of a fabric, I can't see how a watch looks on my wrist. Amazon might offer millions of books, but a lot of people prefer a choice of a few hundred books that are all excellent. Brick-and-mortar retail is qualitatively different to online retail, it satisfies different practical and emotional needs and there are still plenty of opportunities for growth.
  - Mediterraneo10 7y ago
    Mall bookstores have sought to do just that over the last few years. They have slashed their stock of actual books and instead have focused on shelving things of more visual appeal: vinyl records, imported Japanese sets and other bric-a-brac, cute Kikkerland products, etc. In spite of developing that stock that looks nice, I don’t think it is enough to keep those stores afloat. People might walk in and look at that stuff, they might use the store as a “leisure” opportunity, but they don’t necessarily buy much. After all, a lot of those vinyl records and Kikkerland stuff is available online for much cheaper. Even if visitors do make a purchase from the brick-and-mortar shop, are enough of them doing it to pay the high rents on mall spaces? One large non-mall bookstore in my town went the route of moving away from selling purely books towards highlighting more attractive items. When even this was not enough to actually make money, they stayed afloat by turning a whole floor of the shop into a membership-based coworking space. Mall bookstores don’t have that luxury, again due to very constrained space.
- achenatx 7y ago
  I dont need access to every book. I want to know what the best books are. Amazon initially did great at this. But now there is so much crap it is becoming difficult to tell what is good. If a store can actually develop expertise in its inventory and make suggestions that are actually good, and create a great experience around its merchandise then they can thrive. I doubt most will be able to execute on this.
  - Mediterraneo10 7y ago
    > I dont need access to every book. I want to know what the best books are. Reading is such a personal thing that the “best books” for you are probably not the best books for other people. When tastes are so disparate, when the cultural space has fragmented so greatly, then a shop cannot succeed by stocking just a certain set of books. They need an ability to sell to everyone of whatever taste, and online bookshops have an advantage there that malls don’t.
  - ajmurmann 7y ago
    The physical Amazon book stores are incredible in that regard. Every section has nothing but the top books. I recently was in the market for books to learn Japanese. The tiny Amazon store had the top three books. The huge and famous Powell's in Portland had obscure books (some of the were cool and are now on my "once I got the basics down"-list), but none of the top books you'd expect to find.

dghughes 7y ago

Sears began with catalogues the online shopping of the 1890s. Sears should have been the leader of both malls and online shopping.

ultrarunner 7y ago
Oh man, Sears… Sears apparently found a treasure trove of part numbers correlated to product names and decided they would sell any and everything known to man online. That they didn't actually have the product (or know what it was) is completely immaterial— you just click "Add to Cart" and then "Check out!" I remember searching for a datasheet for some really old transistors & ICs I found in my late grandfather's TV-repair parts. Sears was light on details, but offered to sell me some brand new ones despite the company having disappeared a few decades ago! It was a bold strategy, but unfortunately teaching people that your listings are not serious and should be immediately ignored didn't work out in the end. I'm not sure they can pin that on "millennials."

Mediterraneo10 7y ago

How do you improve when you don’t have much room for stock? Mall bookstores were usually extremely constrained for space. There was no way they could compete with an online bookshop that has a whole warehouse full of books, and which can deliver the product straight to do your door in a couple of days. The same could be said for mall CD or DVD shops, with the added pressure that physical media sales dropped drastically as everyone switched to buying online, streaming or YouTube.

jdietrich 7y ago
You don't try to out-internet the internet. You focus on your strengths - the sensory experience, retail as leisure, carefully curated selections of delightful products etc. Many retailers are in deep trouble because they've neglected the customer experience, but there's a substantial market opportunity for what one might describe as "chain boutiques". A YouTube influencer can tell me what brand of cosmetics works for them, but they can't pick out something just for me. I can't smell a bar of soap online, I can't feel the texture of a fabric, I can't see how a watch looks on my wrist. Amazon might offer millions of books, but a lot of people prefer a choice of a few hundred books that are all excellent. Brick-and-mortar retail is qualitatively different to online retail, it satisfies different practical and emotional needs and there are still plenty of opportunities for growth.
- Mediterraneo10 7y ago
  Mall bookstores have sought to do just that over the last few years. They have slashed their stock of actual books and instead have focused on shelving things of more visual appeal: vinyl records, imported Japanese sets and other bric-a-brac, cute Kikkerland products, etc. In spite of developing that stock that looks nice, I don’t think it is enough to keep those stores afloat. People might walk in and look at that stuff, they might use the store as a “leisure” opportunity, but they don’t necessarily buy much. After all, a lot of those vinyl records and Kikkerland stuff is available online for much cheaper. Even if visitors do make a purchase from the brick-and-mortar shop, are enough of them doing it to pay the high rents on mall spaces? One large non-mall bookstore in my town went the route of moving away from selling purely books towards highlighting more attractive items. When even this was not enough to actually make money, they stayed afloat by turning a whole floor of the shop into a membership-based coworking space. Mall bookstores don’t have that luxury, again due to very constrained space.
achenatx 7y ago
I dont need access to every book. I want to know what the best books are. Amazon initially did great at this. But now there is so much crap it is becoming difficult to tell what is good. If a store can actually develop expertise in its inventory and make suggestions that are actually good, and create a great experience around its merchandise then they can thrive. I doubt most will be able to execute on this.
- Mediterraneo10 7y ago
  > I dont need access to every book. I want to know what the best books are. Reading is such a personal thing that the “best books” for you are probably not the best books for other people. When tastes are so disparate, when the cultural space has fragmented so greatly, then a shop cannot succeed by stocking just a certain set of books. They need an ability to sell to everyone of whatever taste, and online bookshops have an advantage there that malls don’t.
- ajmurmann 7y ago
  The physical Amazon book stores are incredible in that regard. Every section has nothing but the top books. I recently was in the market for books to learn Japanese. The tiny Amazon store had the top three books. The huge and famous Powell's in Portland had obscure books (some of the were cool and are now on my "once I got the basics down"-list), but none of the top books you'd expect to find.