When Amazon Kills all the Malls

[tigerred59]

Walmart took out the mom and pop stores and now on line shoppin is gonna take out Walmart....1 billion in sales in just one day on line.

 

[SavannahMann]

Sears cut sales at the local stores by having mail order in their catalog. That went on for over a century. You could look in the catalog, and order anything in it, and for a small fee it would be delivered to you. Or you could go and pick it up at the local Sears store, for free. I know, I did just that when I ordered a deep freezer that they did not have in stock. I did it again when I ordered a kit for my lawnmower. It wasn’t in stock, so a week later, it was just for me.

Sears started out as a Catalog store, with very few physical locations. They were the Amazon.com of the late 1800’s. The first mailed catalog was sent out in 1888. It was revolutionary. You were no longer limited to the choices at your local dry goods store. You could order anything in the catalog.

Was that fair to the Dry Goods stores? Was that fair to the local shops that depended on those sales to survive? Nobody thinks of that today do they? There wasn’t any sales tax, so perhaps the politicians didn’t get worked into a frenzy over lost revenue.

Mail Order was the high technology way to get what you wanted for more than a century. Then the internet came along. Amazon started because Jeff Bezos saw an opening. Book stores didn’t have every book available. Their limited shelf space, coupled with local tastes and trends, meant that the book stores had to order books that would actually sell. I remember the complaints when Books a Million opened, and it was awful that they were going to drive the smaller shops out of business.

Remember that is the storyline in the Romantic Comedy “You’ve Got Mail”.

Today, it is what will we do when the Mall’s all close? What will we do when the local shops are no more? I guess the annual day after thanksgiving clubbing of the elderly and trampling of the infirm will happen in people’s houses as they fight over who gets to place the orders first.

 

[playtime]

turn some into one stop medical clinics, pharmacies,urgent care,& durable equipment sites all under one roof.

We already have those.

& what? there aren't enough. it's better than an empty building... how's about a combo senior housing & clinics?