Yes, but it helps that they are not weighed down by the requirement to carry inventory, have brick and mortar stores, and are primarily in a services business (

Yes, but it helps that they are not weighed down by the requirement to carry inventory, have brick and mortar stores, and are primarily in a services business (logistics as a service, compute as a service, etc). This is, of course, by design, but comparing the two models would not be appropriate. Sears does some of this pass-through badly on their website, but they also used to own a huge chunk of real estate and still manage their own warehouses, in-house brands, etc. Amazon sells you counterfeit goods comingled with whatever manufacturers drop-ship to their warehouse. It's a totally different model. Personally I think there's still room for brick and mortar retailers with some expertise and services that are reliable. Not sure it will scale the same as non-cog people / expertise are involved but not everything has to.