Brick and Mortar retail is slowly dying

[elfenix 34224]

1 hour ago, Celery Man said:

All I'm saying is that Guitar Center should employ facial recognition scanning that matches up with their database of who has purchased things like a custom shop Gibson from them before, and then I'm ushered into a special room with all of the unique and rare guitars/amps as soon as I enter the store.  It's not that complicated.

technology replacing long term sales people/proprietors who know their customers on a first name basis.  what a time to be alive.

[Guest Lobo]

^

It is a great thing if it means shit will cost me less.  Once the technology is acquired and deployed and that initial CapEx is eaten...the long-term savings are going to be monumental.  The moment we can take human interaction out of a transaction, we will.  The only time we truly value human interaction is if something goes wrong with a product or service, then we want an English speaking person deployed immediately.  Otherwise, we don't really value the human interaction.  Shit, we've taken human interaction out of dating (Tinder, et. al.).  That human beings are a "Social Animal" is a lie.  It once served a purpose in forming hunting parties and small villages, but in modern society, it's a lie we tell ourselves to prevent us from killing one another in the street.  

[Aqua Buddha 14582]

2 hours ago, longhornsftmfw said:

Just wait until Amazon has perfected altered reality shopping, where you can try on clothes and maybe inspect big ticket items like BBQ grills, refrigerators, and stoves. Then combine that with their AI-powered drone-based fulfillment service and I see even Wal-Mart having a hard time staying relevant. Some of you guys are missing the benefits of being one of the leading tech companies on top of a leading retailer. They can subsidize development of these tools using profits from AWS, then both use those tools to improve their own business and sell those tools to other businesses. I usually hate the term "synergy" but this is it. This is why the market treats them like a tech company, not a retailer; because they act like a tech company, not a retailer. Their ethics are certainly questionable in some areas (I disagree entirely with how they treat their employees, from software engineer to warehouse floor worker), but their business acumen is pretty hard to criticize.

1 hour ago, 'stache said:

Walmart will be fine. This country will never have a shortage of poor white trash.

 

Yeah, this.  WMT has $20B-$30B in positive cash flow so let's pump the breaks on their demise.  I'm of the opinion they while they both might think they're competing with one another, there's not as much overlap as they think.  AMZN's members are more upscale and WMT's are the poors.  That's why the WF purchase was a good idea for them.  Almost all WF shoppers were already Prime members.  There's no overlap between them and bargain food shoppers and if AMZN wants to use WF to play in the lower price tiers, they'll get destroyed.

Don't overrate technology, though.  Anything invented by one company can be copied by another soon after.  It's a matter of strategy, commitment, and leadership.  WMT's achilles heel isn't Wall Street, it's their own slavish devotion to profit margin.  If they announced that they were suspending the dividend and devoting all profit to investing in the business, they're stock would crash but then they'd have $30B annually to plow back in.  If they kept the dividend for family reasons, they'd still have $15B per year or close to that.  Their stock would still crash but they'd still have the dividend yet they still cling to that margin like it's a life raft.  We could never figure that out, either.  Why do they care as long as the dividend is maintained?  I digress, though.  They've never been committed to a single strategy for the long term whereas AMZN has a strategy and sticks to it and that's drive by their margin obsession than AMZN doesn't have.

Maybe if AMZN was traded like a non tech company and their stock crashed, they'd start to care.  

 

[tokamak 6395]

1 hour ago, Aqua Buddha said:

 

Yeah, this.  WMT has $20B-$30B in positive cash flow so let's pump the breaks on their demise.  I'm of the opinion they while they both might think they're competing with one another, there's not as much overlap as they think.  AMZN's members are more upscale and WMT's are the poors.  That's why the WF purchase was a good idea for them.  Almost all WF shoppers were already Prime members.  There's no overlap between them and bargain food shoppers and if AMZN wants to use WF to play in the lower price tiers, they'll get destroyed.

I'm a heavy Amazon user, but I think they need a real competitor and I don't think they really have one right now. Seems like Walmart or Jack Ma are the only people who could actually make a serious run at it at this point.

[longhornsftmfw 129]

One thing not to overlook when talking about competing technologies is talent acquisition. AMZN has been playing the software engineering recruiting game for longer than WMT, and has pushed the prestige of its engineering team into the top tier of West Coast tech. They may grind you to death, but you'll work on harder problems and learn faster than at the vast majority of other tech companies. WMT can't boast that, even though they've increased their presence in Silicon Valley. This talent acquisition experience is absolutely key in the technological arms race that retail and logistics is. If WMT isn't smart about how they invest in technology, they can burn through that $20-$30B cash flow very quickly. I'm not an Amazon fanboy, I'd never work there as a developer, but I recognize the huge lead they have on WMT in anticipating how the next generation of consumer wants to receive their products. WMT is fine in the short term, but I think in the medium to long term they have a pressing need to evolve. It remains to be seen how serious they are about addressing that need.

[Aqua Buddha 14582]

5 minutes ago, longhornsftmfw said:

One thing not to overlook when talking about competing technologies is talent acquisition. AMZN has been playing the software engineering recruiting game for longer than WMT, and has pushed the prestige of its engineering team into the top tier of West Coast tech. They may grind you to death, but you'll work on harder problems and learn faster than at the vast majority of other tech companies. WMT can't boast that, even though they've increased their presence in Silicon Valley. This talent acquisition experience is absolutely key in the technological arms race that retail and logistics is. If WMT isn't smart about how they invest in technology, they can burn through that $20-$30B cash flow very quickly. I'm not an Amazon fanboy, I'd never work there as a developer, but I recognize the huge lead they have on WMT in anticipating how the next generation of consumer wants to receive their products. WMT is fine in the short term, but I think in the medium to long term they have a pressing need to evolve. It remains to be seen how serious they are about addressing that need.

I'd agree with that on the tech talent and recruiting part.  WMT is 10 years behind AMZN there but they've made up some ground recently.  They're still a ways behind and it's significantly easier to do business with AMZN as a supplier.

WMT had a big win with their store pick up, though.  Their ubiquitous real estate presence is their bigges advantage.  They should have been doing that ten years ago, though.

[longhornsftmfw 129]

4 minutes ago, Aqua Buddha said:

I'd agree with that on the tech talent and recruiting part.  WMT is 10 years behind AMZN there but they've made up some ground recently.  They're still a ways behind and it's significantly easier to do business with AMZN as a supplier.

WMT had a big win with their store pick up, though.  Their ubiquitous real estate presence is their bigges advantage.  They should have been doing that ten years ago, though.

Agreed, they need to be innovative with their advantages, with real estate probably being the biggest advantage they have. They were too slow to the in-store pickup game by years, they can't afford to continue being so sluggish in their adaptation to changing markets.

[Gene Parmesan 4003]

So what's the end game for Amazon if their retail side needs to be subsidized by their other revenues?  Are they just trying to take over the retail world and then one day will flip the switch on prime costs and we have no choice but to pay?

[Incredulity 11655]

Quote

  They're still a ways behind and it's significantly easier to do business with AMZN as a supplier.

IMPO you are conflating supplier with "listing on Amazon".  Selling into Amazon's warehouses is a shitshow.  They are extremely difficult on direct suppliers.

[Orange&White 5522]

7 hours ago, 'stache said:

Walmart will be fine. This country will never have a shortage of poor white trash.

And if that ain't Country, I'll kiss your ass.

[atomheartbevo 89629]

On 6/1/2018 at 1:53 PM, Gene Parmesan said:

So what's the end game for Amazon if their retail side needs to be subsidized by their other revenues?  Are they just trying to take over the retail world and then one day will flip the switch on prime costs and we have no choice but to pay?

Has anybody been in the Amazon bookstore in Austin (or elsewhere) enough to judge the popularity? Seems like if Amazon is going to stock it with mainly their4-star products, they would do well. 

[woohorn 1131]

All I'm saying is that Guitar Center should employ facial recognition scanning

"facial recognition"? Pretty sure they have been doing this for decades.

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4975]

Amazon has got to get their counterfeit problem under control if they really want to take over retail. Even ordering directly from Amazon they have too many fakes with the same SKU thrown in their product bins. That should be a simple fix, but it is still a huge problem.

[Parliament 14247]

Yeah they took a LOT if heat for all the fake ACOG's on there a few years back.

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4975]

Diapers are pretty bad as well. Apparently all the third party boxes get thrown in with Amazon's stuff in the same bin as long as they have the same SKU. And many of those are fake. So even if you order them from Amazon you are rolling the dice that whichever box they pull out and send to you is going to be real. We had to stop ordering from them and just go back to buying them from the store even though it costs a little bit more.

[RandomIdoit 655]

20 minutes ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

Diapers are pretty bad as well. Apparently all the third party boxes get thrown in with Amazon's stuff in the same bin as long as they have the same SKU. And many of those are fake. So even if you order them from Amazon you are rolling the dice that whichever box they pull out and send to you is going to be real. We had to stop ordering from them and just go back to buying them from the store even though it costs a little bit more.

We have the subscribe and save for diapers to save 20% and have never had an issue with counterfeit diapers.

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4975]

That's what we were doing with the Pampers we were using. We got one box of diapers that ripped much easier and caused our girl to break out into a rash. According to the googles it's not that uncommon.

[RandomIdoit 655]

1 hour ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

That's what we were doing with the Pampers we were using. We got one box of diapers that ripped much easier and caused our girl to break out into a rash. According to the googles it's not that uncommon.

Pampers used to be great, now Huggies are much better IMO.

[RPM 26318]

[Stunns38 3460]

Amazon has got to get their counterfeit problem under control if they really want to take over retail. Even ordering directly from Amazon they have too many fakes with the same SKU thrown in their product bins. That should be a simple fix, but it is still a huge problem.

 

Some examples:

Counterfeit pampers products and Gillette products are rampant. There’s a reason why they refund some items with no questions asked.

 

Edit: ^ y’all beat me to it about Pampers, especially their shitty wipes(pun intended)

[ShaggyBevo RIP 3868]

On 4/23/2018 at 11:36 AM, RDCanecutter said:

I had some fun yesterday.

One of my jobs is selling art online. I needed more storage space for about 100 small paintings, you can't just stack them. Once at Walmart I found some kind of dish drainer that works well as a Painting Storage Rack. It's the only one that ever worked right. So I go to Wally World to get some more Right Now.

Walmart was all Poor People Shuffling Slowly. I didn't see the rack I wanted, so, out of a sense of morbid fascination, I approached two workers who were interrupting their conversation about a chicken place to place items on a shelf, to see if they had seen any other racks.

The one with asymmetrically-placed false eyelashes came over to me. "Huuuuuuh... you wanna rack...." She had her phone out, Johnny-on-the-spot no doubt checking Walmart inventory. Then I saw that on her phone was the face of her coworker two aisles away, sharing a bon mot. "huuuuh... I'on know...."

The child wandered off with her phone. She's the one who beat the other candidates at the job interview.

I swung by Target to see if they had the same rack that I could get Right Now. Target was all Middle-Class People Being Important, clipping along with their butts tucked in planning the assault on Pointe du Hoc on their phones. "Yes We Are On Aisle 30 D Now We Will Finish In 5 Minutes And Then We Can Collaborate On The HOA Letter Re Dandylions."

No damn rack there either.

So I figure I'll do the modern thing, go home, get the brand and serial number off the racks I already have, slide a dildo up my ass, then order it from Amazon. So I unload a shitload of paintings off one rack, and-- nothing. Not a single mark of any sort. I must be looking at some Jack Ma Ali Baba Bootleg thing made from recycled Chinese death row prisoners.

A search through hundreds of images on Google is fruitless. The racks I want must all now be floating in that plastic-choked dead zone in the Pacific. Nobody online has anything like it.

Then it occurs to me-- I could just make it. I could make the same thing out of cardboard. I have a ton of strong clean cardboard, because eBay gives me shipping materials for free.

Full circle.

You spent money on storage racks? I'm crushed. 

Edited June 4, 2018 by ShaggyBevo RIP

[RDCanecutter 26398]

1 hour ago, ShaggyBevo RIP said:

You spent money on storage racks? I'm crushed. 

I did that a long time ago and it was wrong but that ain't me no mo.

I never even got around to making extra storage racks out of cardboard.

What I DID do is switch from little I-need-a-storage-rack paintings to big-ass store-em-by-hangin-em-on-the-wall paintings. No ragrats.

[Sandman 3403]

On ‎6‎/‎1‎/‎2018 at 1:35 PM, Aqua Buddha said:

I'd agree with that on the tech talent and recruiting part.  WMT is 10 years behind AMZN there but they've made up some ground recently.  They're still a ways behind and it's significantly easier to do business with AMZN as a supplier.

WMT had a big win with their store pick up, though.  Their ubiquitous real estate presence is their bigges advantage.  They should have been doing that ten years ago, though.

I played golf last week and got paired up with a guy who's a GM at Walmart. He said they're getting ready to start grocery delivery and they feel it will be a huge win for them (I'm in Oklahoma, so some of you may already have this option). He also said the curbside grocery pickup was doing well. I told him how much I hate the website and he said they're getting ready to overhaul that as well. It sounds like they're really trying to step up their game.

[Gene Parmesan 4003]

I don't think my wife has ever picked up an order that was 100% correct from Walmart.  I guess all and all it's better than lugging a 3 year old through the store at 5 pm, but they either substitute stuff they shouldn't or completely forget items, and after the initial wait going through and checking everything is there kind of defeats the purpose of any convenience.

[BearSchlong 8083]

21 minutes ago, Sandman said:

I played golf last week and got paired up with a guy who's a GM at Walmart. He said they're getting ready to start grocery delivery and they feel it will be a huge win for them (I'm in Oklahoma, so some of you may already have this option). He also said the curbside grocery pickup was doing well. I told him how much I hate the website and he said they're getting ready to overhaul that as well. It sounds like they're really trying to step up their game.

For all of Amazon's technology accolades, the format of their website is awful.

[longhornsftmfw 129]

2 hours ago, BearSchlong said:

For all of Amazon's technology accolades, the format of their website is awful.

Hell yes, they clearly focus on the backend of their stack, not the frontend. Most of their AWS management interfaces are fucking terrible, just like the retail site is. I tend to use the command line to interact with AWS over using the terrible website version. Their UI/UX design is anywhere between 5 and 10 years old, which is like decades in frontend, where multiple frameworks have risen and fallen in that span. /nerdrant

 

UI/UX could definitely be another place for Wal-Mart to invest and take advantage.

[Macanudo 12975]

30 minutes ago, longhornsftmfw said:

another place for Wal-Mart to invest

That made me laugh.  it will just come out of employee's OT money.

[longhornsftmfw 129]

3 minutes ago, Macanudo said:

That made me laugh.  it will just come out of employee's OT money.

Ouch, guess I should have put quotes around invest 😅

[tokamak 6395]

4 hours ago, Gene Parmesan said:

I don't think my wife has ever picked up an order that was 100% correct from Walmart.  I guess all and all it's better than lugging a 3 year old through the store at 5 pm, but they either substitute stuff they shouldn't or completely forget items, and after the initial wait going through and checking everything is there kind of defeats the purpose of any convenience.

Walmart store pick up is hit-or-miss and store dependent in my experience. At the store by my house, the pickup counter is all the way at the back of the store, is always a crowded chaotic mess, and is staffed by imbeciles who give zero fucks. The Walmart by my office, on the other hand, has a gargantuan orange vending machine as the first thing you encounter when you step in the front door. You scan your phone, your item(s) get pushed out on a tray, and you walk right out. Zero human interaction. The entire process takes literally one minute.

Guess which one of these I use all the time, and which one I will never use again.

[woohorn 1131]

Think grocery pick up is diff than ship 2store. Stores now have special grocery pickup areas around the side with huge signs and special spaces so you sit in car and they bring it to you car at assigned time.

GP hit on my prob with all the grocery delivery systems- substitutions. Esp problematic at Walmart because stocking is so bad.

[hayden_horn 11362]

5 minutes ago, woohorn said:

Think grocery pick up is diff than ship 2store. Stores now have special grocery pickup areas around the side with huge signs and special spaces so you sit in car and they bring it to you car at assigned time.

GP hit on my prob with all the grocery delivery systems- substitutions. Esp problematic at Walmart because stocking is so bad.

all i know is that this increases the shopping cart density at heb in the aisles, as the have those stands there for the employees to aggregate items on lists.

[Washpark 176]

[Aqua Buddha 14582]

Apparel is a weird online category.  Lots of sales but a shitload of returns.  People like my wife (no pics) will order three of same item, try them all on, and ship two back.

I've always wanted to see a total P&L breakout of the online business of a major apparel retailer.

[Celery Man 20933]

I think guys would generally get more benefit out of online shopping than women.  For casual clothes, if there was any kind of consistency with Levis at all I'd be completely done shopping in stores.  T-shirts and button downs - why the fuck am I driving to a place and hoping they have a size/color/pattern combination that's right when I know what two of those are exactly?

[Parliament 14247]

You can add Wranglers to that list as well.  Pretty dumb that I gotta try on every single pair before I buy.

[atomheartbevo 89629]

On 6/3/2018 at 6:22 AM, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

Amazon has got to get their counterfeit problem under control if they really want to take over retail. Even ordering directly from Amazon they have too many fakes with the same SKU thrown in their product bins. That should be a simple fix, but it is still a huge problem.

Not just counterfeits, but when different companies are selling the same product from the same factory, just under a different label.  See this all the time, but it drove me nuts when looking through getting a cheap fishing rod-and-reel, and I’d see the same combo from different companies, and one offering has great ratings, the other shitty ratings, and then trying to figure out what ratings were fake, etc.

Edited June 5, 2018 by atomheartbevo

[chainsaw 9859]

I don't know if I will ever trust another person to select produce for me.

[RDCanecutter 26398]

Son of Canecutter works at a big grocery store. He really likes the grocery home delivery people, says they have social skills and are interested in the products, unlike regular customers who often won't even look up from their phones.

[Jameslaw121 4448]

5 hours ago, Celery Man said:

I think guys would generally get more benefit out of online shopping than women.  For casual clothes, if there was any kind of consistency with Levis at all I'd be completely done shopping in stores.  T-shirts and button downs - why the fuck am I driving to a place and hoping they have a size/color/pattern combination that's right when I know what two of those are exactly?

I don't understand why sizes can be different from brand to brand. I wear a 32" waist. Send wife to target to get me some shorts. She bring back 3 and a pair of jeans. Only one pair of shorts actually fit correctly on the waist.....

[Gene Parmesan 4003]

33 minutes ago, Jameslaw121 said:

I don't understand why sizes can be different from brand to brand. I wear a 32" waist. Send wife to target to get me some shorts. She bring back 3 and a pair of jeans. Only one pair of shorts actually fit correctly on the waist.....

Just cinch your jean shorts up with one of these and you'll be fine

 

[FordRules 57]

It’s true I’m at Sears now and it’s like a graveyard but with more ugly people 

Edited June 5, 2018 by FordRules

[Jameslaw121 4448]

35 minutes ago, Gene Parmesan said:

Just cinch your jean shorts up with one of these and you'll be fine

 

It's not jean shorts - Cargo shorts with extra pocket. Goes with my sandels and socks

[tokamak 6395]

32 minutes ago, Jameslaw121 said:

It's not jean shorts - Cargo shorts with extra pocket. Goes with my sandels and socks

[Sandman 3403]

There are plenty of times I want to buy things at an actual store but they don't carry the things that they used to carry. I needed an aerator for my faucet, so I went to Lowes. They said theose only came in the box when you buy a faucet. WTF? Ace Hardware had nothing, my local plumbing/electric wholesale place had nothing either. I ordered it from amazon and got it 2 days later. Same thing with my phone case. I don't have an iphone or galaxy, so it's nearly impossible to get a case for my phone at a local store. Amazon had it, though.

B&M stores are screwed. They either carry a bunch of shit that people only buy once in a blue moon, or not carry those things and force people to shop online.

[Guest Lobo]

B&M stores are screwed because they think consumers still crave the human interaction part of a transaction.  We don't.  That was our least favorite part this whole time.  

The "mom & pop" touch to a shopping experience wasn't the feature, and it wasn't the bug.  It was a fucking annoying person you had to deal with in order to get the shit you needed.  

[HenryJames 66038]

 

[Guest Lobo]

It's hard to feel sorry for company that's going to leave us with millions of square feet of blight for decades to come.  Fucking CRE maniac developers, building for a time that will never come again.  Nevermind the financial idiocy of what you're doing, you're sticking our grandchildren with eyesores that cover open space that will never come back.  Twat-waffles...

Edited June 29, 2018 by Lobo

[Fico 1778]

11 minutes ago, Lobo said:

It's hard to feel sorry for company that's going to leave us with millions of square feet of blight for decades to come.  Fucking CRE maniac developers, building for a time that will never come again.  Nevermind the financial idiocy of what you're doing, you're sticking out grandchildren with eyesores that cover open space that will never come back.  Twat-waffles...

Ummm ya, CRE developers aren't building shit if companies aren't leasing, especially big box retail. Big bad developers are not the problem, the problem are companies that continue to demand that space and continue to sign leases.

Side note, one of the better opportunities in CRE is the repurposing of big box retailer locations with medical or creative office. They are usually in very visible locations that are highly trafficked,  near densely populated areas, with surrounding amenities, and unique, wide open, high ceiling space.

[Guest Lobo]

How many more ACC campuses do we need, man? 

 

good points though.

Edited June 29, 2018 by Lobo

[Homercles 10205]

Speaking of medical...how do those private ERs stay in business? There are dozens of them popping up all over and they always look empty...just takes one emergency a day worth of insurance payouts to stay open I guess?