Shops fighting online giants
I’m not the most enthusiastic of mall rats, but it is heartening to see so many of Christchurch’s suburban shopping destinations in a state of rejuvenation and expansion.
Merivale Mall’s top-to-toe refresh has been long overdue, while the mega-malls of Northlands and Westfield Riccarton continue to morph.
Love them or loath them, suburban malls can help foster a sense of community, as gathering points for the shared experience.
Our bricks-and-mortar retail is seemingly in much better health than what I’ve seen while travelling throughout the Pacific Northwest this month. I’ve been genuinely shocked.
Some suburban malls I ventured inside, in northern California, Oregon and Washington resembled cavernous retail twilight zones, all but deserted of shoppers.
I stepped inside the sprawling expanse of Sears in Eureka, and I swear that I was the only shopper in the store – at 4pm. Sales staff greeted me with a weary bemused smile, fleetingly jolted from the despondency of their daily boredom.
Hulking slabs of multi-level prime retail real estate exuding a deathly dearth of humanity.
Shania Twain and Coldplay warbled away through the speakers, like the pied pipers of mall melancholy. It was a surreal and disconcerting encounter with the hollowing out of American shopping centres. And it’s the major retailers that are really bearing the brunt of the ‘‘Amazon effect.’’
As you’ll know, Toys R Us has just announced it’s liquidating all of its 735 stores. Declining mall traffic is forcing Foot Locker to close 110 stores. The aforementioned Sears is shutting more than 100 stores, JCPenney 140 and Kmart 64.
As more Americans shop on their screens, some retail analysts forecast over 200 entire malls will close this year. Last week in Seattle, I noticed what used to be a five-storey downtown shopping mall is being completely demolished to make way for another shiny office tower to house Amazon’s employees. How symbolic.
Across the road, the symbolism is even richer at the grand old Macy’s department store in Seattle. The traditional retailer now only operates from the first two floors of its city flagship. Amazon has hoovered up the other five, to accommodate more of its workers.
But Macy’s isn’t going quietly into the good night, despite shredding stores and staff. Customer personalisation is now the all-out focus for the proud American department store, with Macy’s boss, Jeff Gennette, saying they’re ‘‘no longer in the commodity business. We’re in the experience business’’.
Gennette seems to be pinning his hopes on ‘‘Mobile Checkout’’, which is currently being rolled out in-store. Powered by the Macy’s app, it allows shoppers to automatically pay by credit card at self-checkouts, speeding up the process dramatically.
I was particularly intrigued to see Nordstrom, another old-school major retail powerhouse, has just launched Nordstrom Local – a new-age store with no dedicated inventory. Instead, customers go there to retrieve their online orders or to make returns.
The next big frontier on the retail landscape appears to be online grocery delivery.
Walmart announced last week it’s expanding its grocery delivery service to more than 40 per cent of American homes.
It’s particularly anxious to try and counter Amazon in the frontdoor food war, following the internet giant’s acquisition of the natural-food supermarket chain, Whole Foods Markets. Amazon now operates home delivery of groceries, in two-hour blocks.
But Walmart is now spruiking the most ‘‘sophisticated’’ home delivery model ever: It’s slashing delivery costs, offering more precise delivery windows and launching new packaging that keeps frozen foods cold.
And Walmart is also fine-tuning an optional extra, whereby the delivery person actually enters your house and puts the groceries away for you.
Call me old-fashioned, but isn’t that not only pandering to supreme laziness, but just a bit yuck? I know the likes of Countdown have offered home delivery for quite some years. It remains very niche.
But would you really want a complete stranger fiddling with your feijoas, let alone rifling through your fridge and pantry? It’s already a $10 billion dollar business in the United States, and forecast to grow exponentially.
But as much as Kiwis are fast adapters to tech-trends, consumer convenience and the digital world, I can’t see home grocery delivery and personal unpacking, catching on here.