In my role as advisor to small businesses, I often hear first-hand the challenges and failures of retail store owners who fear the advantages of online and feel the exodus to eCommerce, led by Amazon and Ebay. Ironically, the most common desire I hear from entrepreneurs selling wholly online, is the need for their entry into retail, as the next step in their growth strategy.
What neither group seems to fully comprehend is that retail needs to fundamentally change to succeed, far beyond the addition of an online component, to meet the experience expectations of today’s generation, an oversupplied global marketplace, and technology for instant pricing and distribution. Many pundits are already talking about a “retail apocalypse” that has already started.
