11 ms·

The Next Phase of the Retail Apocalypse: Stores Reborn as E-Commerce Warehouses

146 points by prostoalex 6y ago

tux1968 6y ago
Article appeared on another site without paywall: https://www.marketscreener.com/WALMART-INC-4841/news/The-Next-Phase-of-the-Retail-Apocalypse-Stores-Reborn-as-E-Commerce-Warehouses-30945947/ https://www.marketscreener.com/WALMART-INC-4841/news/The-Nex...
- jbhouse 6y ago
  Bless you kind stranger
justinzollars 6y ago
Expensive fulfillment warehouses. If you watch the 2000 interview of Jeff Bezos - the reason he predicted he would beat retail was because the cost of square foot of his fulfillment centers was a fraction of what retail pays.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  I'm willing to pay Home Depot/Lowes/Best Buy/Target/Costco/REI/Nordstroms/Apple multiples of what Amazon would cost to ensure I don't have to waste my time searching through uncurated AliExpress garbage.
  - mint2 6y ago
    Yeah Although those stores also suffer from the problem of wading through products to find the one you need, They’re better than newegg and much better than Walmart or amazon.
  - tesseract 6y ago
    For everyday items I agree but for niche (including high-end) items Amazon is often hard to beat - the competition is either local specialty stores that are not really searchable online, may be set up to cater to professionals/businesses rather than the general public, and/or might not even exist at all anymore; or other online retailers that don't necessarily have the cheap and fast logistics that Amazon does.
    - ketzo 6y ago
      That’s funny, my trust profile is exactly the opposite — I’ll use Amazon in a heartbeat for kitty litter, but if I’m ordering a camera lens/PC part/nicer clothing, I’m ordering from the manufacturer/a specialty site. I think for me, the more everyday a purchase is, the less I care about if the purchase goes wrong in some small way? I do see where you’re coming from, though - I’ve many times gone through the process of: “I wonder if amazon has any <niche item>?” ... “Oh, Amazon has literally dozens of different <niche item>s, cool”
      - actuator 6y ago
        That's interesting. Do you generally not check if the item is sold by Amazon.com itself? For me, I still prefer Amazon if it is a high value item, I check the seller though. I prefer to have my contact information/payment information stored by a company I can trust to keep it safe and in as few places as possible.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
        imtringued 6y ago
        I've stopped using Amazon because almost nothing is sold directly by Amazon itself. I've been forced to use Amazon gift cards but I immediately told my friend afterwards that I spent 15% more than if I had bought it from an online retailer with a better reputation than Amazon.
        criddell 6y ago
        > almost nothing is sold directly by Amazon itself What do you base that statement on? I order lots of stuff from Amazon and almost all of it is sold by Amazon and not a third-party. Sometimes I do have to pick Amazon from the list of alternate sellers.
        throwanem 6y ago
        I got my Nikon 200-500mm tele lens off Amazon, and it was sold by Amazon. It was also, by its serial number, a gray-market item manufactured for the Chinese market, and not covered by warranty when sold in the US. But you can't find that out until you have it in your hands. It worked perfectly as I got it, and the model had been on the market past the early peak of the bathtub curve, so I kept it. Still works perfectly today, too. But it taught me a valuable lesson about how far Amazon can be trusted on high-ticket items. These days the only camera gear I get from Amazon is trivial niche stuff like eyepiece diopters that aren't worth anyone's trouble to gray-market or counterfeit. For everything else, there's my local camera store, or B&H or Adorama.
  - dutch3000 6y ago
    true. becoming more and more leery of knock off items on amazon.
  - greeniron 6y ago
    man, i often hear people complain about aliexpress, i just don't understand it. i've been buying and using headscratchingly cheap products from china through aliexpress, and seriously as long as you're not a complete newbie to online shopping, it's not that difficult to find a legitimate store selling perfectly usable generic or unbranded products at a fraction of the cost of the branded version and they all work just fine. i've easily saved thousands of dollars over the years this way. i don't understand why people are so against this - a lot of what they buy from amazon or supermarkets in fact come from china as well.
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      I think Aliexpress is great. Amazon is a marked up aliexpress, and that’s not great. When I pay a markup, I expect something extra like curating of products so I know what the low-mid-high tier options are without sifting through tons of search results and reviews. Or at least not commingling of stock, so I know what I’m getting.
    - FireBeyond 6y ago
      Pretty much. If I search Amazon for something and there's a bunch of brands I don't know selling the exact same product with their brand name screen printed in the exact same location? Just go to AliExpress and buy it there.
    - perl4ever 6y ago
      Is that stuff tested by Underwriters Laboratories? It makes sense that if Amazon is just dumping the same stuff under fake brands, why not go to the source. But anything that uses electricity could burn your house down, couldn't it?
      - greeniron 6y ago
        i mean... that's a legit theoretical concern, but so far i've bought many dirt cheap electronic products from ali for years and so far they've all worked as advertised.
  - fibbery 6y ago
    I bought two pairs of sunglasses from Amazon recently. Different brands, different pictures, different price. Ended up with two pairs of the exact same glasses...
  - FireBeyond 6y ago
    Best Buy has a warehouse near me that will allow you to do order pickup directly from them. Vast warehouse outside Spanaway in Washington. "No retail services are available here" but they will bring appliances etc to the loading dock for you (no idea whether you could use it for smaller items but most likely).
- Closi 6y ago
  When the physical stores are open to the public too, the incremental cost can be zero. This is why grocery E-commerce distribution is usually done from a store estate (with the exception of occado, which has a higher cost to serve but also gives a better resulting service).
  - rjkennedy98 6y ago
    > When the physical stores are open to the public too, the incremental cost can be zero. Wow this is so far off (as someone who works at an e-commerce company). Optimizing a warehouse is incredibly difficult and time consuming and often involves expensive and specialized equipment like sorters. Wayfair for instance STILL has only had like 2 profitable quarters and they specialize in e-commerce and fulfillment. Having your employees go pick things off of shelves and pack them and figure out which truck to go on is not a simple problem. You simply aren't going to make any money if your business model is having employees physically go manually pick stuff off shelves and package them in boxes and ship them at $10 an hour.
- Shivetya 6y ago
  Well I am more interested in how local governments handle the tax loss when some of these businesses leave town to consolidate elsewhere. Big box stores and their like were always a guarantee boost with not only the store but businesses which built up in the same or close by centers. What remains won't be vastly different, grocery will likely be the big anchor for most strip malls with small restaurants, personal care, and such filling out the rest. Pretty sure the Dollar* type stores and pharmacies will still keep their spot. Two generations and the gas stations and their tax base will be gone too but that is a different situation. There may never be a better time to not live in cities. With the move to BEV transportation and online everything from work, shopping, and play, it will free up people to have more choices.
  - novok 6y ago
    Well it's pretty difficult to avoid paying sales tax on the major ecommerce platforms now in many if not all major markets. So they will receive their taxes as normal. Instead of best buy, it will be more mailing depots & amazon sending them sales tax without the cost of providing services to those big retail centers. We don't even know if those warehouses will have many jobs, since amazon is pushing towards automating them more and more. Suburbia also costs more to service from a cities perspective, with more pavement, miles of sewer pipes and so on, so we might very well see suburbs get more expensive than the cities too, since revenue starts becoming more about how many people live in a city vs the location of retail centers. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/4/27/this-is-the-end-of-the-suburban-experiment https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/4/27/this-is-the-en...
djhaskin987 6y ago
I got a buddy who works for DSCO, a company which, among other things, sells software that makes it easy for brick-and-mortar stores to sell products online and have the products ship from the retailer's warehouses. Around the time of the pandemic, they change their software so that the stores themselves would look like warehouses to the software. That way, they could ship from any of these so-called warehouses and then support ship-from-store on the websites of their customers. This functionality was sort of in in demand before the pandemic, but many potential customer said "no thanks, we'll build it ourselves". After the pandemic hit, everyone went scrambling to DSCO for help to support ship-from-store. This article seems to talk about the next logical step away from ship-from-store: turn the store into a shipping yard.
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
  Honestly I wish there was 'ship-a-replacement' to store. If something is on Amazon, why can't I pick up from Home Deport and have them ship inventory to Home Depot to replace the thing I just picked up...
  - talliedthoughts 6y ago
    They're competitors, and presumably are selling the item at different prices. If Amazon is cheaper, HD would have to give you the item for less than they normally sell it. If Amazon is more expensive, why not buy the thing directly from HD, you're going there to pick it up anyway.
    - dutch3000 6y ago
      Amazon used to always be cheaper. not any more. amazon has realized people shop it for convenience and not mainly for price.
  - cortesoft 6y ago
    If the item is at Home Depot and you want to pick it up... why not just get it from Home Depot?
Animats 6y ago
Ship-from-retail-store doesn't work very well. You get some random subset of what you ordered. The online ordering system needs to know the inventory to make this work right. Right now, I can get quick delivery of a random subset of what I order from Safeway, Doordash, or Costco. They send some random gig worker into the store and mark up the prices. I'd rather have two-day delivery of exactly what I ordered. So how good are these new outfits at that?
- Axsuul 6y ago
  Can you expand on what you mean by some random subset of what you ordered?
  - inerte 6y ago
    I think they meant "random subset of what you can order"
    - jedberg 6y ago
      No, they mean random subset of what you tried to order. If you use Instacart, at least in California, there is a good chance that 1/3 of your items will be "unavailable" and they just won't get it. The problem is, if you order flour, milk, and sugar, and then they don't bring the sugar, you can't make the thing you wanted to make. But you also can't return the partial order.
      - inerte 6y ago
        Got it, that makes sense.
      - monsieurbanana 6y ago
        And that's legal? The more you know...
        usud7e2uehf 6y ago
        Speaking as a California scrooge, I still prefer it to the alternatives honestly. My neighborhood has one mini-target and three local grocers one of which is a co-op. All three local grocers are garbage, their quality is fine but nothing wild and most of the price is for pretty looking food that doesn't scare the local yoga moms. Also, because they are all small and the target had to agree not to sell certain things the food variety available is not stellar. Thanks to Instacart I can order from places with real prices and a wide range of grocery products. Instacart is especially great because Amazon Fresh, although better than the local options for variety, is also wildly over priced and so if I want delivery+thrift Instacart is basically the only game in town because the bar is that low. I am thrilled at the idea that some of these local shops might finally have to adapt thanks to the increasing presence of delivery services.
tijuco2 6y ago
Why do people keep posting paid articles here? Most people don't have subscriptions
- pabs3 6y ago
  Most paywalls are trivial to bypass with a new browser profile or deleting cookies or disabling JavaScript. Some like the WSJ paywall can be bypassed using archive sites like archive.is, archive.org or outline.com. For example: https://archive.is/20200720034756/https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-next-phase-of-the-retail-apocalypse-stores-reborn-as-e-commerce-warehouses-11595044859 https://archive.is/20200720034756/https://www.wsj.com/articl...
- zorpner 6y ago
  If you're not paying to read it, someone else is paying to have you read it.
  - taneq 6y ago
    And if you are paying to read it, someone else is still paying to have you read it.
- mattmanser 6y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic.
- OJFord 6y ago
  Because there's no rule against it, a significant enough minority do have (perhaps corporate network-wide) subscriptions, and the paywalls can often be bypassed anyway for those that don't.
jedberg 6y ago
They better make the experience much better. They don't pay the gig workers nearly enough to care and get this stuff right. I don't blame the pickers at all. The stuff in retail stores isn't labeled for warehouse style picking. When my wife sends me to the store with the list, I have a hard enough time getting exactly what she wants, and I already have a pretty good idea what she wants since I live with her. A poor hourly gig worker has no chance of getting it right.
- function_seven 6y ago
  My local Vons keeps sending me $20 off coupons if I use their delivery service. I've tried; 3 times. All failures. First, their UI is confusing. I didn't realize at first that I could specify—for each item—if I would accept a substitution or not. And I got about 70% of my order right, 15% wrong, and 15% missing. The second time, I diligently went through each item in my cart and set my substitution preference. This is another fail. The choices are (1) No substitutions; (2) substitute with same brand, different size; or (3) substitute with different brand, same size. What I would like is “(4) Cancel the entire order if you can't fulfill this item” and “(5) These x items are all-or-none” But that's a logistical nightmare I assume. They're not going to have the pickers drop the cart as soon as they realize they can't find item #23 on my list. Nor can they criss-cross the store verifying the must-haves before moving on with the rest of the list. And the failures are not just missing items. Substitution preferences are subjective and personal. On my first order, they didn't have Diet Coke. So I got regular Coke instead. When I got wise to setting the preferences, it still resulted in getting the chips, but no dip. Perfect, real-time inventory won't solve this. I can order an item that's in stock, then get "front-run" by a shopper who's actually in the store. FWIW, I have these issues regardless if it's Instacart or Vons' own delivery personnel (They use both). And I don't blame the picker one bit. I used to shop for my Dad when he could no longer drive. He was just as disappointed with my results as I am with theirs :)
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
Melting_Harps 6y ago
It's going to happen, this is actually why I've re-focused on Supply Chain/Logistics as there is so much room for potential growth and re-capturing losses within them as I saw working in the Automotive side of Logistics and Supply Chain a few years back. We're going through a very unique, but much needed, transition right now that will likely bring about the automated warehouses, distribution hubs, and transport depots we always read about in books and and sci-fi lore--and that so many feared. It also re-enforces the need for UBI now more than ever, something that not long ago was though to be impossible, yet is being pilot tested by Andrew Yang and Jack Dorsey as well as other places in the US, and even by YC itself! I'm actually optimistic, and believe if we play it right it could in fact be the seeds that allow for a Post-scarcity economy one day on Earth, as so much is lost in critical supply chains, and having these over-extended international based ones may have done more harm than good, as they accelerated a race to the bottom system in terms of price and quality (even on critical things like Medical Supplies/Drugs) as so much went to China but also made most countries entirely dependent on the CCP and has way more Geo-political consequences than we can predict. Right now I'm taking a course in Supply Chain Operations and my final will be analyzing the consequences from the displacement of critical manufactured goods (PPE) to China and the affects it has had during the onset of COVID, and now also recently due to the massive flooding in Wuhan and the surrounding areas of China [1]. The most optimistic delays in lead-time are 2-3 weeks, but if COVID showed anything, as we saw with Medical staff in the US and even Australia having to go months without PPE and wearing trash bags in lieu of actual medical grade PPE, is that its best to actually double that to get an accurate time. But it wasn't all bad as it also saw many 3D printing hobbyists use the technology for ACTUALLY MEANINGFUL potential instated of printing trinkets you use to clutter a work desk. And some other companies, mostly in the automotive Industry, pivoted to making breathing apparatuses. 1: https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/record-china-flooding-impacts-ppe-supply-chain-to-us/ar-BB16VX4L https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/record-china-fl...
- csa 6y ago
  > I've re-focused on Supply Chain/Logistics as there is so much room for potential growth and re-capturing losses within them Could you expand on this some more? I realized you spoke a bit about this issue in the rest of your post, but I would love to read more specifics.
phendrenad2 6y ago
As everyone moves to e-commerce, a lot of companies are going to be burned by counterfeit products finding their way into their warehouses. This is a problem Amazon just kinda ignores, because it has such a high volume that they can just accept returns no-questions-asked. But when store-that-is-accustomed-to-in-person-sales suddenly has a bunch of people returning items that are wrong, they won't know what to do. Are the customers scamming them, sending back the wrong item? Was it the supplier? The manufacturer's warehouse? Their own warehouse? It's a tough problem, perhaps there's room for a 3rd party company that only traces the source of counterfeits.
- MaximumYComb 6y ago
  That's just for the products that can be proven to be fakes. There is also a lot that just are shoddy that you cannot prove, in which case the store loses a repeat customer. Amazon has already lost me for products where I care about quality. The Pilot G2-05 pens I buy in store ($5 each in Australia) have never had any issues and all worked flawlessly until I drained them of ink. The Amazon 12 pack hasn't had a single pen reach the end of its life.
  - m463 6y ago
    My favorite pens are pentel energel 0.7. Dark black ink, lowest writing effort, never blobby or scratchy. I get them from Amazon, but would be devastated if they started be counterfeited.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  >As everyone moves to e-commerce, a lot of companies are going to be burned by counterfeit products finding their way into their warehouses And how is this any different than the status quo? Walmart, Best Buy, basically everyone but Amazon already tracks which inbound shipments correspond to which purchases so they can keep their brand reputations unpolluted by shoddy widgets and cut unreliable suppliers from their supply chain if need be. This is a solved problem. It's just that solving it comes with some overhead and a particular major player thinks it's easier to not deal with the overhead up front and instead handle it after the consumer has the goods. It's yet to be proven how sustainable this approach is.
exanimo_sai 6y ago
This is not really the next phase - retail has been on a downward trajectory since the first online sale was made. The spiral down just buffered by a global economy that was growing. Working with Westfield back in 2008 there was talks already of redesigning mall footprints to have smaller stores that can act as pop-up shops/ collection points etc. However there was an overall equilibrium achieved as malls started playing into the idea that their differentiation was on "experience". Shopping and going to the mall remains a highly social activity. And I believe will survive well past the pandemic. And perhaps stores will be smaller individually and act as both in-store sales, collection points for online purchases and pop-up stores to market new products.
- 2sk21 6y ago
  I think malls might be sustainable with just clothing and restaurants (and the Apple Store).
fuckyouidiot 6y ago
I’m willing to pay you to shut the fuck up.
acd 6y ago
Local stores still can compete with speed and shopping experience. Ie the future of stores is hybrid local/e-commerce. I hope that there will be both types of stores in the future for the city center to flourish. Imagine going as a tourist to a city which only had e-commerce and not stores that would probably not be as fun experience as a live city with local shopping.
- fermienrico 6y ago
  I might be the only person who dislikes traveling. To me, traveling is an expensive way to explore food, museums and maybe some overcrowded landmarks. I went to Paris, Tokyo, and all we did was followed a guidebook of one touristy place after another. Instead, I prefer to save that money to do something here locally. Maybe go get a nice dinner at the French Laundry. Or rent a convertible and cruise around in Californian weather. Yes, just because it’s local doesn’t mean that it’s any less. If I lived in Paris, I would want to check out my own city thoroughly. Explore corners of Paris every weekend. Traveling is overrated IMO. I hate the logistics, I somewhat dislike the experience as a whole but maybe some places are fun. Especially like going to Asian cities where it is a whole another world. Here in America where I live, there is so much stuff to see already. Just do a cross country road trip for 3 weeks. Totally unmatched experience. Tourists, no matter how “covert”, are basically treated like a commodity and no one really gives a shit about you as a tourist to come and explore the culture. Tourism was incredible 40 years ago probably when mobility wasn’t that accessible. $400 flights to Asia and Europe has killed it for me just by the virtue of explosion of tourism. I want genuine connection with foreign cultures. Off beaten paths are actually quite beaten up, despite of what you think.
  - kd5bjo 6y ago
    > I might be the only person who dislikes traveling. To me, traveling is an expensive way to explore food, museums and maybe some overcrowded landmarks. I went to Paris, Tokyo, and all we did was followed a guidebook of one touristy place after another. > Just do a cross country road trip for 3 weeks. Totally unmatched experience. It sounds like you do like travelling, but dislike the tourism industry. It’s quite possible to get the same tourism experience you describe for Paris in any major US city. It’s also possible to travel in Europe without feeling like you’re visiting a theme park— ditch the guidebook and just wander.
mathattack 6y ago
This is becoming more common in retail now. It requires a common set of systems and databases for both the retail and eCommerce business. (Side note - this is the scope of The Phoenix Project)

146 points by prostoalex 6y ago

tux1968 6y ago

Article appeared on another site without paywall: https://www.marketscreener.com/WALMART-INC-4841/news/The-Next-Phase-of-the-Retail-Apocalypse-Stores-Reborn-as-E-Commerce-Warehouses-30945947/ https://www.marketscreener.com/WALMART-INC-4841/news/The-Nex...

jbhouse 6y ago
Bless you kind stranger

justinzollars 6y ago

Expensive fulfillment warehouses. If you watch the 2000 interview of Jeff Bezos - the reason he predicted he would beat retail was because the cost of square foot of his fulfillment centers was a fraction of what retail pays.

lotsofpulp 6y ago
I'm willing to pay Home Depot/Lowes/Best Buy/Target/Costco/REI/Nordstroms/Apple multiples of what Amazon would cost to ensure I don't have to waste my time searching through uncurated AliExpress garbage.
- mint2 6y ago
  Yeah Although those stores also suffer from the problem of wading through products to find the one you need, They’re better than newegg and much better than Walmart or amazon.
- tesseract 6y ago
  For everyday items I agree but for niche (including high-end) items Amazon is often hard to beat - the competition is either local specialty stores that are not really searchable online, may be set up to cater to professionals/businesses rather than the general public, and/or might not even exist at all anymore; or other online retailers that don't necessarily have the cheap and fast logistics that Amazon does.
  - ketzo 6y ago
    That’s funny, my trust profile is exactly the opposite — I’ll use Amazon in a heartbeat for kitty litter, but if I’m ordering a camera lens/PC part/nicer clothing, I’m ordering from the manufacturer/a specialty site. I think for me, the more everyday a purchase is, the less I care about if the purchase goes wrong in some small way? I do see where you’re coming from, though - I’ve many times gone through the process of: “I wonder if amazon has any <niche item>?” ... “Oh, Amazon has literally dozens of different <niche item>s, cool”
    - actuator 6y ago
      That's interesting. Do you generally not check if the item is sold by Amazon.com itself? For me, I still prefer Amazon if it is a high value item, I check the seller though. I prefer to have my contact information/payment information stored by a company I can trust to keep it safe and in as few places as possible.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - imtringued 6y ago
        I've stopped using Amazon because almost nothing is sold directly by Amazon itself. I've been forced to use Amazon gift cards but I immediately told my friend afterwards that I spent 15% more than if I had bought it from an online retailer with a better reputation than Amazon.
        criddell 6y ago
        > almost nothing is sold directly by Amazon itself What do you base that statement on? I order lots of stuff from Amazon and almost all of it is sold by Amazon and not a third-party. Sometimes I do have to pick Amazon from the list of alternate sellers.
      - throwanem 6y ago
        I got my Nikon 200-500mm tele lens off Amazon, and it was sold by Amazon. It was also, by its serial number, a gray-market item manufactured for the Chinese market, and not covered by warranty when sold in the US. But you can't find that out until you have it in your hands. It worked perfectly as I got it, and the model had been on the market past the early peak of the bathtub curve, so I kept it. Still works perfectly today, too. But it taught me a valuable lesson about how far Amazon can be trusted on high-ticket items. These days the only camera gear I get from Amazon is trivial niche stuff like eyepiece diopters that aren't worth anyone's trouble to gray-market or counterfeit. For everything else, there's my local camera store, or B&H or Adorama.
- dutch3000 6y ago
  true. becoming more and more leery of knock off items on amazon.
- greeniron 6y ago
  man, i often hear people complain about aliexpress, i just don't understand it. i've been buying and using headscratchingly cheap products from china through aliexpress, and seriously as long as you're not a complete newbie to online shopping, it's not that difficult to find a legitimate store selling perfectly usable generic or unbranded products at a fraction of the cost of the branded version and they all work just fine. i've easily saved thousands of dollars over the years this way. i don't understand why people are so against this - a lot of what they buy from amazon or supermarkets in fact come from china as well.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    I think Aliexpress is great. Amazon is a marked up aliexpress, and that’s not great. When I pay a markup, I expect something extra like curating of products so I know what the low-mid-high tier options are without sifting through tons of search results and reviews. Or at least not commingling of stock, so I know what I’m getting.
  - FireBeyond 6y ago
    Pretty much. If I search Amazon for something and there's a bunch of brands I don't know selling the exact same product with their brand name screen printed in the exact same location? Just go to AliExpress and buy it there.
  - perl4ever 6y ago
    Is that stuff tested by Underwriters Laboratories? It makes sense that if Amazon is just dumping the same stuff under fake brands, why not go to the source. But anything that uses electricity could burn your house down, couldn't it?
    - greeniron 6y ago
      i mean... that's a legit theoretical concern, but so far i've bought many dirt cheap electronic products from ali for years and so far they've all worked as advertised.
- fibbery 6y ago
  I bought two pairs of sunglasses from Amazon recently. Different brands, different pictures, different price. Ended up with two pairs of the exact same glasses...
- FireBeyond 6y ago
  Best Buy has a warehouse near me that will allow you to do order pickup directly from them. Vast warehouse outside Spanaway in Washington. "No retail services are available here" but they will bring appliances etc to the loading dock for you (no idea whether you could use it for smaller items but most likely).
Closi 6y ago
When the physical stores are open to the public too, the incremental cost can be zero. This is why grocery E-commerce distribution is usually done from a store estate (with the exception of occado, which has a higher cost to serve but also gives a better resulting service).
- rjkennedy98 6y ago
  > When the physical stores are open to the public too, the incremental cost can be zero. Wow this is so far off (as someone who works at an e-commerce company). Optimizing a warehouse is incredibly difficult and time consuming and often involves expensive and specialized equipment like sorters. Wayfair for instance STILL has only had like 2 profitable quarters and they specialize in e-commerce and fulfillment. Having your employees go pick things off of shelves and pack them and figure out which truck to go on is not a simple problem. You simply aren't going to make any money if your business model is having employees physically go manually pick stuff off shelves and package them in boxes and ship them at $10 an hour.
Shivetya 6y ago
Well I am more interested in how local governments handle the tax loss when some of these businesses leave town to consolidate elsewhere. Big box stores and their like were always a guarantee boost with not only the store but businesses which built up in the same or close by centers. What remains won't be vastly different, grocery will likely be the big anchor for most strip malls with small restaurants, personal care, and such filling out the rest. Pretty sure the Dollar* type stores and pharmacies will still keep their spot. Two generations and the gas stations and their tax base will be gone too but that is a different situation. There may never be a better time to not live in cities. With the move to BEV transportation and online everything from work, shopping, and play, it will free up people to have more choices.
- novok 6y ago
  Well it's pretty difficult to avoid paying sales tax on the major ecommerce platforms now in many if not all major markets. So they will receive their taxes as normal. Instead of best buy, it will be more mailing depots & amazon sending them sales tax without the cost of providing services to those big retail centers. We don't even know if those warehouses will have many jobs, since amazon is pushing towards automating them more and more. Suburbia also costs more to service from a cities perspective, with more pavement, miles of sewer pipes and so on, so we might very well see suburbs get more expensive than the cities too, since revenue starts becoming more about how many people live in a city vs the location of retail centers. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/4/27/this-is-the-end-of-the-suburban-experiment https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/4/27/this-is-the-en...

djhaskin987 6y ago

I got a buddy who works for DSCO, a company which, among other things, sells software that makes it easy for brick-and-mortar stores to sell products online and have the products ship from the retailer's warehouses. Around the time of the pandemic, they change their software so that the stores themselves would look like warehouses to the software. That way, they could ship from any of these so-called warehouses and then support ship-from-store on the websites of their customers. This functionality was sort of in in demand before the pandemic, but many potential customer said "no thanks, we'll build it ourselves". After the pandemic hit, everyone went scrambling to DSCO for help to support ship-from-store. This article seems to talk about the next logical step away from ship-from-store: turn the store into a shipping yard.

WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
Honestly I wish there was 'ship-a-replacement' to store. If something is on Amazon, why can't I pick up from Home Deport and have them ship inventory to Home Depot to replace the thing I just picked up...
- talliedthoughts 6y ago
  They're competitors, and presumably are selling the item at different prices. If Amazon is cheaper, HD would have to give you the item for less than they normally sell it. If Amazon is more expensive, why not buy the thing directly from HD, you're going there to pick it up anyway.
  - dutch3000 6y ago
    Amazon used to always be cheaper. not any more. amazon has realized people shop it for convenience and not mainly for price.
- cortesoft 6y ago
  If the item is at Home Depot and you want to pick it up... why not just get it from Home Depot?

Animats 6y ago

Ship-from-retail-store doesn't work very well. You get some random subset of what you ordered. The online ordering system needs to know the inventory to make this work right. Right now, I can get quick delivery of a random subset of what I order from Safeway, Doordash, or Costco. They send some random gig worker into the store and mark up the prices. I'd rather have two-day delivery of exactly what I ordered. So how good are these new outfits at that?

Axsuul 6y ago
Can you expand on what you mean by some random subset of what you ordered?
- inerte 6y ago
  I think they meant "random subset of what you can order"
  - jedberg 6y ago
    No, they mean random subset of what you tried to order. If you use Instacart, at least in California, there is a good chance that 1/3 of your items will be "unavailable" and they just won't get it. The problem is, if you order flour, milk, and sugar, and then they don't bring the sugar, you can't make the thing you wanted to make. But you also can't return the partial order.
    - inerte 6y ago
      Got it, that makes sense.
    - monsieurbanana 6y ago
      And that's legal? The more you know...
      - usud7e2uehf 6y ago
        Speaking as a California scrooge, I still prefer it to the alternatives honestly. My neighborhood has one mini-target and three local grocers one of which is a co-op. All three local grocers are garbage, their quality is fine but nothing wild and most of the price is for pretty looking food that doesn't scare the local yoga moms. Also, because they are all small and the target had to agree not to sell certain things the food variety available is not stellar. Thanks to Instacart I can order from places with real prices and a wide range of grocery products. Instacart is especially great because Amazon Fresh, although better than the local options for variety, is also wildly over priced and so if I want delivery+thrift Instacart is basically the only game in town because the bar is that low. I am thrilled at the idea that some of these local shops might finally have to adapt thanks to the increasing presence of delivery services.

tijuco2 6y ago

Why do people keep posting paid articles here? Most people don't have subscriptions

pabs3 6y ago
Most paywalls are trivial to bypass with a new browser profile or deleting cookies or disabling JavaScript. Some like the WSJ paywall can be bypassed using archive sites like archive.is, archive.org or outline.com. For example: https://archive.is/20200720034756/https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-next-phase-of-the-retail-apocalypse-stores-reborn-as-e-commerce-warehouses-11595044859 https://archive.is/20200720034756/https://www.wsj.com/articl...
zorpner 6y ago
If you're not paying to read it, someone else is paying to have you read it.
- taneq 6y ago
  And if you are paying to read it, someone else is still paying to have you read it.
mattmanser 6y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic.
OJFord 6y ago
Because there's no rule against it, a significant enough minority do have (perhaps corporate network-wide) subscriptions, and the paywalls can often be bypassed anyway for those that don't.

jedberg 6y ago

They better make the experience much better. They don't pay the gig workers nearly enough to care and get this stuff right. I don't blame the pickers at all. The stuff in retail stores isn't labeled for warehouse style picking. When my wife sends me to the store with the list, I have a hard enough time getting exactly what she wants, and I already have a pretty good idea what she wants since I live with her. A poor hourly gig worker has no chance of getting it right.

function_seven 6y ago
My local Vons keeps sending me $20 off coupons if I use their delivery service. I've tried; 3 times. All failures. First, their UI is confusing. I didn't realize at first that I could specify—for each item—if I would accept a substitution or not. And I got about 70% of my order right, 15% wrong, and 15% missing. The second time, I diligently went through each item in my cart and set my substitution preference. This is another fail. The choices are (1) No substitutions; (2) substitute with same brand, different size; or (3) substitute with different brand, same size. What I would like is “(4) Cancel the entire order if you can't fulfill this item” and “(5) These x items are all-or-none” But that's a logistical nightmare I assume. They're not going to have the pickers drop the cart as soon as they realize they can't find item #23 on my list. Nor can they criss-cross the store verifying the must-haves before moving on with the rest of the list. And the failures are not just missing items. Substitution preferences are subjective and personal. On my first order, they didn't have Diet Coke. So I got regular Coke instead. When I got wise to setting the preferences, it still resulted in getting the chips, but no dip. Perfect, real-time inventory won't solve this. I can order an item that's in stock, then get "front-run" by a shopper who's actually in the store. FWIW, I have these issues regardless if it's Instacart or Vons' own delivery personnel (They use both). And I don't blame the picker one bit. I used to shop for my Dad when he could no longer drive. He was just as disappointed with my results as I am with theirs :)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

Melting_Harps 6y ago

It's going to happen, this is actually why I've re-focused on Supply Chain/Logistics as there is so much room for potential growth and re-capturing losses within them as I saw working in the Automotive side of Logistics and Supply Chain a few years back. We're going through a very unique, but much needed, transition right now that will likely bring about the automated warehouses, distribution hubs, and transport depots we always read about in books and and sci-fi lore--and that so many feared. It also re-enforces the need for UBI now more than ever, something that not long ago was though to be impossible, yet is being pilot tested by Andrew Yang and Jack Dorsey as well as other places in the US, and even by YC itself! I'm actually optimistic, and believe if we play it right it could in fact be the seeds that allow for a Post-scarcity economy one day on Earth, as so much is lost in critical supply chains, and having these over-extended international based ones may have done more harm than good, as they accelerated a race to the bottom system in terms of price and quality (even on critical things like Medical Supplies/Drugs) as so much went to China but also made most countries entirely dependent on the CCP and has way more Geo-political consequences than we can predict. Right now I'm taking a course in Supply Chain Operations and my final will be analyzing the consequences from the displacement of critical manufactured goods (PPE) to China and the affects it has had during the onset of COVID, and now also recently due to the massive flooding in Wuhan and the surrounding areas of China [1]. The most optimistic delays in lead-time are 2-3 weeks, but if COVID showed anything, as we saw with Medical staff in the US and even Australia having to go months without PPE and wearing trash bags in lieu of actual medical grade PPE, is that its best to actually double that to get an accurate time. But it wasn't all bad as it also saw many 3D printing hobbyists use the technology for ACTUALLY MEANINGFUL potential instated of printing trinkets you use to clutter a work desk. And some other companies, mostly in the automotive Industry, pivoted to making breathing apparatuses. 1: https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/record-china-flooding-impacts-ppe-supply-chain-to-us/ar-BB16VX4L https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/record-china-fl...

csa 6y ago
> I've re-focused on Supply Chain/Logistics as there is so much room for potential growth and re-capturing losses within them Could you expand on this some more? I realized you spoke a bit about this issue in the rest of your post, but I would love to read more specifics.

phendrenad2 6y ago

As everyone moves to e-commerce, a lot of companies are going to be burned by counterfeit products finding their way into their warehouses. This is a problem Amazon just kinda ignores, because it has such a high volume that they can just accept returns no-questions-asked. But when store-that-is-accustomed-to-in-person-sales suddenly has a bunch of people returning items that are wrong, they won't know what to do. Are the customers scamming them, sending back the wrong item? Was it the supplier? The manufacturer's warehouse? Their own warehouse? It's a tough problem, perhaps there's room for a 3rd party company that only traces the source of counterfeits.

MaximumYComb 6y ago
That's just for the products that can be proven to be fakes. There is also a lot that just are shoddy that you cannot prove, in which case the store loses a repeat customer. Amazon has already lost me for products where I care about quality. The Pilot G2-05 pens I buy in store ($5 each in Australia) have never had any issues and all worked flawlessly until I drained them of ink. The Amazon 12 pack hasn't had a single pen reach the end of its life.
- m463 6y ago
  My favorite pens are pentel energel 0.7. Dark black ink, lowest writing effort, never blobby or scratchy. I get them from Amazon, but would be devastated if they started be counterfeited.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
>As everyone moves to e-commerce, a lot of companies are going to be burned by counterfeit products finding their way into their warehouses And how is this any different than the status quo? Walmart, Best Buy, basically everyone but Amazon already tracks which inbound shipments correspond to which purchases so they can keep their brand reputations unpolluted by shoddy widgets and cut unreliable suppliers from their supply chain if need be. This is a solved problem. It's just that solving it comes with some overhead and a particular major player thinks it's easier to not deal with the overhead up front and instead handle it after the consumer has the goods. It's yet to be proven how sustainable this approach is.

exanimo_sai 6y ago

This is not really the next phase - retail has been on a downward trajectory since the first online sale was made. The spiral down just buffered by a global economy that was growing. Working with Westfield back in 2008 there was talks already of redesigning mall footprints to have smaller stores that can act as pop-up shops/ collection points etc. However there was an overall equilibrium achieved as malls started playing into the idea that their differentiation was on "experience". Shopping and going to the mall remains a highly social activity. And I believe will survive well past the pandemic. And perhaps stores will be smaller individually and act as both in-store sales, collection points for online purchases and pop-up stores to market new products.

2sk21 6y ago
I think malls might be sustainable with just clothing and restaurants (and the Apple Store).

fuckyouidiot 6y ago

I’m willing to pay you to shut the fuck up.

acd 6y ago

Local stores still can compete with speed and shopping experience. Ie the future of stores is hybrid local/e-commerce. I hope that there will be both types of stores in the future for the city center to flourish. Imagine going as a tourist to a city which only had e-commerce and not stores that would probably not be as fun experience as a live city with local shopping.

fermienrico 6y ago
I might be the only person who dislikes traveling. To me, traveling is an expensive way to explore food, museums and maybe some overcrowded landmarks. I went to Paris, Tokyo, and all we did was followed a guidebook of one touristy place after another. Instead, I prefer to save that money to do something here locally. Maybe go get a nice dinner at the French Laundry. Or rent a convertible and cruise around in Californian weather. Yes, just because it’s local doesn’t mean that it’s any less. If I lived in Paris, I would want to check out my own city thoroughly. Explore corners of Paris every weekend. Traveling is overrated IMO. I hate the logistics, I somewhat dislike the experience as a whole but maybe some places are fun. Especially like going to Asian cities where it is a whole another world. Here in America where I live, there is so much stuff to see already. Just do a cross country road trip for 3 weeks. Totally unmatched experience. Tourists, no matter how “covert”, are basically treated like a commodity and no one really gives a shit about you as a tourist to come and explore the culture. Tourism was incredible 40 years ago probably when mobility wasn’t that accessible. $400 flights to Asia and Europe has killed it for me just by the virtue of explosion of tourism. I want genuine connection with foreign cultures. Off beaten paths are actually quite beaten up, despite of what you think.
- kd5bjo 6y ago
  > I might be the only person who dislikes traveling. To me, traveling is an expensive way to explore food, museums and maybe some overcrowded landmarks. I went to Paris, Tokyo, and all we did was followed a guidebook of one touristy place after another. > Just do a cross country road trip for 3 weeks. Totally unmatched experience. It sounds like you do like travelling, but dislike the tourism industry. It’s quite possible to get the same tourism experience you describe for Paris in any major US city. It’s also possible to travel in Europe without feeling like you’re visiting a theme park— ditch the guidebook and just wander.

mathattack 6y ago

This is becoming more common in retail now. It requires a common set of systems and databases for both the retail and eCommerce business. (Side note - this is the scope of The Phoenix Project)