Good ol’ Main Street
Back in the day you could buy everything you needed on Main Street. Then Main Street was swapped out for malls and shopping centers and then those for Super Targets/Walmarts.
Now Amazon (and a few others, but mostly Amazon) has come in and scooped up all of the foot traffic that used to go to those stores.
Brick and mortar break down
Brick and mortar is on the way out (honestly, it’s been on the way out) and Amazon just keeps picking up steam (at least 152 million active accounts)! Malls used to be filled with wandering teens and busy shoppers.
Who wants to go out to a store and buy something you don’t immediately need when it can be delivered to your doorstep in 48 hour’s time?
Timeliness is next to godliness
I think we all know the answer. Online is cheaper, faster, and more convenient. We don’t have to deal with parking or going to a store, only for them to not have the item we are looking to purchase.
Online, there are no crowds, no annoying sales people bugging us every five seconds when, in today’s culture, we know what we want, when we want it and how to get it, without anyone’s help.
Clicking a button or two and getting exactly what we want is the dream experience and it’s no longer a dream!
Amazon has got it goin’ on
According to a ReadyCloud.com article from February 2016, Amazon has 183 million products! What local store can say that?! With all of their goods they could stock 1290 Walmart Super Centers.
The number of monthly visitors to Amazon could fill 80 Mall of Americas or 60 Disney Lands.
And to further set themselves apart Amazon created this little thing you might have heard of, “Prime,” back in 2005 that offers two days guaranteed shipping!
A little bit of everyone is using Amazon
Nineteen percent of Millennials, 16 percent of Gen X-ers and 11 percent of Baby Boomers have a prime account and the number of Prime accounts (which comes with guaranteed two-day shipping) has increased 35 percent since 2015. Now, in 29 cities, those who have prime accounts can get items within an hour. In 1000 additional cities, Prime account holders can get same day shipping!
It’s pretty damn hard to compete with that and companies like Macy’s, JCPenny, and many others aren’t.
Several retail chains are closing storefronts left and right and while some try to salvage business by moving online, others are just dying out.
Moving past main street
As much as I like to romanticize Main Street and the role it has played in America’s history, it’s just not a sustainable concept. Just ask Wet Seal, J. Crew, Nine West, True Religion, and Payless (all of whom are on the chopping block). Macy’s has been dubbed a high credit risk this years by Moody’s which means they’re also in trouble, and Claire’s has a huge payment coming up on their $1.79B in bond debt and most doubt they’ll be able to make it, so they’re also in line for serious troubles.
[clickToTweet tweet=”The bottom line is that people want the cheapest and easiest shopping experience possible.” quote=”The bottom line is that people want the cheapest and easiest shopping experience possible.”]
In today’s society, easy shopping comes by a click of the mouse and a ring of the doorbell – not driving, walking, talking, searching and still maybe not finding what we are looking for. We already have zombie malls that are vacated and sometimes revitalized as schools, but most are just becoming dilapidated, abandoned lots – will this happen to brick and mortars small and large?
Whether it is Amazon or merely shopping on a company’s site instead at their store front, online is in and sadly, Main Street is out.
