The Retail Apocalypse
Jul. 15th, 2019 12:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithStores are closing as more shopping moves online, and people don't want to lose all of them.
Shoppers won't get a choice, though. Stores aren't there to make you happy. Their purpose is to make money. If they don't, they'll close, no matter how many people want or need them. You can just do without being able to try on clothes before you buy them or having a hardware clerk who actually knows what the products do. The only way stores will survive is if people shop in them, and that's happening less and less. Worse, it's the specialty stores that get hit the hardest -- and those are the products that benefit most from personal interaction. Some generic stores may survive, but they're not great. Imagine a world with nothing left but WalMart and a few shoe stores. >_<
Shoppers won't get a choice, though. Stores aren't there to make you happy. Their purpose is to make money. If they don't, they'll close, no matter how many people want or need them. You can just do without being able to try on clothes before you buy them or having a hardware clerk who actually knows what the products do. The only way stores will survive is if people shop in them, and that's happening less and less. Worse, it's the specialty stores that get hit the hardest -- and those are the products that benefit most from personal interaction. Some generic stores may survive, but they're not great. Imagine a world with nothing left but WalMart and a few shoe stores. >_<
Thoughts
Date: 2019-07-15 07:47 pm (UTC)Sadly so.
>> This may have been because of financial constraints - they couldn't afford to have a selection that made customers like me happy - or it may have been because they judged that they only needed to be as good as their competition, which was just as bad.<<
For most stores, it's all about profit. They will do whatever makes them the most money. They don't care if people can find things they need, as long as shoppers buy enough to turn a profit.
>> Ditto for the shopping environment, where most clothing stores were and are actively unpleasant to me because of so-called music. <<
Let's not forget the nasty trend of putting computers every few aisles in grocery stores blasting commercials. It doesn't make me want to buy more; it makes me want to grab the shit I need and get out. >_<
>> And you also can't forget the fashion for buying companies, loading them up with debt to make a short term profit, then abandoning them to fail when interest rates went up. <<
Parasitic capitalism is a huge problem.
>> - a type/flavour of tea no local store carries<<
Yeah, I found my adaptogenic tea at a privately owned international store, but their distributor quit carrying it, leaving me no other option but to buy it online. Usually I just give up the thing, but this is a load-bearing item for me.
What I have noticed is that the churn is now much worse than it used to be. There's always been a slow tendency for established products to disappear, but now it's common to find something for a few weeks or months and then lose it.
Case in point: fiber bars. They started out with a bunch of flavors, which gradually dwindled. Then they added a new version that's 70 calories instead of 90, but instead of doing something sensible like omitting chocolate chips and icing, they changed the two main ingredients to nonfood supplements. ("And don't call it food: it's Chow.") I tried a box out of curiosity and found them ghastly. Now Wal-Mart has quit carrying the original version and often doesn't even have the bad replacement. I surmise that most other people did what I did and nobody would buy the crap a second time. >_<
>>But for me personally, etail has been a net win - until the etailers realized they had enough market share to behave as badly asother retailers.<<
Yyyeah. Which makes it the same as Wal-Mart moving in and killing all the other local businesses, then acting monstrous.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2019-07-16 06:49 am (UTC)*For the curious, it is brushtail meat, which is a cute but invasive species of possum in New Zeland.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2019-07-16 07:39 am (UTC)This is my response to edible invasives of all kinds. People may piss and moan about how much trouble they cause, but seriously, never doubt humanity's ability to kill things. We wiped out the passenger pigeons and they used to blot out the sun. People can wipe out anything if they're motivated enough. Create a compelling market for it and human nature will do the rest.
Might as well make a virtue out of vice.