Shopping for boots took more than a store

Iam a walkin' trend, shufflin' along a right smart more comfortable lately, in fact.

My recent approach to shoppin' for boots? Like Festus with a smartphone.

"Wellll, first off, I reckon I'll stop by that there Tener's there on the highway while I'm out and about," I figured one afternoon a week or so ago, meanin' the store on Broadway just south of downtown Edmond.

I reckon you might orta pause here to let the image of Festus ridin' his mule while jawin' and eye ballin' and pokin' around on

a smartphone fade some. (Young people: Google "Gunsmoke.")

Now, no offense, Tener's, but you didn't have what I thought I was looking for this time, not on the shelf anyway. Online, yes. I checked right there in the store on my smartphone. But buying boots is a handson experience, so to speak.

Online again I went later anyway, not to buy, but to see what all was available I might not have thought of, and where — then to head my heels back out to an actual store to try pairs on and plunk down my hard-earned nickel.

To the Boot Barn site, which had some I liked, which also has a store seven miles from my house. To the Langston's site, which also had some I liked, and has a store 20 miles from the house, in Stockyards City, where there is another place my wife and I were overdue to visit: The Cattlemen's Steakhouse.

So off we went the first chance we got. I bought a pair of Ropers — shoes, not boots, which I never would have considered if I hadn't first gotten to looking at them, and thinking about it, online in the comfort of my own home. Then we walked across Exchange Avenue for steaks.

Thereby, I lived out part of something Price Edwards & Co. talks about — again — in its midyear retail property market summary:

"Retail isn't dying, it is changing to meet customer preferences," according to the report, available at www. priceedwards.com. "Broad trends include a more integrated shopping experience."

For boots, it didn't occur to me to go online first. Nor would it for a hat. For jeans and shirts and other clothing, I'm now a regular online shopper and buyer, once I have a brand and size that I know works.

"A majority of consumers now start their shopping on the internet which means retailers are bolstering their digital capabilities and figuring out new ways to combine the internet with their stores," Price Edwards said. "This trend will continue as retailers get better data on how consumers use the internet for shopping and determine the optimal mix of stores and digital. An exciting part of this process is internet retailers that are now opening physical stores as it's proven to increase their digital sales in areas that they do."

Here are some juicy stats Price Edwards sprinkled across a few pages of its market report:

• From Salesforce.com, a customer relationship management service: 87% of people surveyed now start shopping with digital, up from 71% in 2017.

• From Survata, a brand research company: 49% of online shoppers start with Amazon; 36% start with a search engine; 15% go to brands of retailers.

• From Salesforce: People across the generations still prefer to go to a physical store to make a purchase, 62% of boomers, 58% of Generation Z'ers.

• From Forrester Research: Smartphones were used in more than onethird of U.S. retail sales in 2018.

Now, if you did not give that mental image of Festus ridin' his mule while jawin' and eyeballin' and pokin' around on a smartphone fade some, you mighta missed all that, so you orta go back up and give this piece another looksee.