‘For so long, people have predicted the demise of movie theatres, but people still like to go to the movies.’
Jeff Bezos, 20181
You don’t have to look very hard today to find an article or piece of research that positions e-commerce as the death knell for the bricks and mortar store. The word ‘apocalypse’ has officially entered the retail lexicon and is arguably too well documented in the media these days – it even has its own Wikipedia page.
Doom and gloom make good headlines, and we’ll spend most of this chapter defying the apocalypse narrative, but first let’s make one thing very clear: we have too many stores. Today, we have an oversupply of retail space; we have retail space that is no longer fit for purpose.
So, naturally stores are shuttering – and it’s happening quickly. According to Cushman & Wakefield, there were nearly 9,000 major chain store closures in the US in 2017, with another 12,000 expected for 2018.2 In the same year, there were more than 20 retail bankruptcies – from clothing chains like The Limited to iconic brands like Toys R Us.3 Meanwhile, shopping malls are becoming an endangered species: by 2022, up to one quarter of US malls are expected to have closed.4
While this is especially pronounced in the overbuilt suburbs of the US, it’s by no means an American phenomenon. In the UK, the Centre for Retail Research has predicted that total store numbers will fall by 22 per cent in 2018,5 while in Canada, shoppers have bid farewell to major retail chains such as Sears and Target in recent years.
Meanwhile, global shopper demand and expectations for online retail are booming. According to McKinsey, China now has more online shoppers than any other nation and accounts for 40 per cent of global e-commerce sales.6 In the UK, according to the Office for National Statistics, online sales of non-food items have doubled in the past five years and currently account for 25 per cent of the overall market.7