E-commerce didn’t kill bricks-and-mortar stores, but it made them worse. Much worse.
Physical stores today are understaffed and full of inconveniences such as locked shelves and self–checkout lines. Now, add one more gripe to the list: not enough stuff.
If you have ever trekked to a store only to be told the item you are looking for is out of stock but can be ordered online, you aren’t alone. The practice is so common that retailers have a name for it.
“We called it SOS—Save Our Sale,” said Jerry Storch, a former chief executive of Toys “R” Us and Saks Fifth Avenue parent HBC.
Lucia Gulbransen, a stylist in Westport, Conn., has another name for it: “Retail gymnastics.”
“It’s really time-consuming,” said Gulbransen, 58.
The consulting firm AlixPartners studied 30 retailers and found that on average only 9% of their online women’s clothing assortment was available in physical stores. For department stores, the percentage was 7%, and at mass merchants it was 2%. Specialty retailers fared better, with a third of their online goods available in stores.
The internet ushered in a new era of shopping nirvana, in which we could order whatever we wanted from the comfort of our couch. It also has siphoned money and merchandise away from bricks-and-mortar stores, turning buzzy emporiums into dilapidated mausoleums. Retailers have vastly expanded the breadth of products they sell online to better compete with Amazon.com, making the offerings in their physical stores feel paltry by comparison.
Retail CEOs like to say they want customers to shop however they want—either online, in stores or a combination of the two. The reality is that they make more money when customers buy from physical stores because packing and shipping expenses eat into online profits.
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