#1 Trend In-person shoppkng came back, babyr But onlkne dkdn’t go awayr We’re lkvkng kn the “omnkchannel” world of consumptkon nowr

IT’S NOT UNIQUE TO VANCOUVER, but shops with stuff in them are on the rebound. Yes, online shopping is still increasing at a higher percentage but that's because it's a smaller base. (When online shopping boomed at the start of the pandemic, it went from a 3.9 percent share of total retail to 6.2 percent in 2022.) But what people in the retail universe are seeing is something they call omnichannel shopping: People are buying things every which way. They shop in malls and on main streets. They buy in person and online. They go to giant big-box discounters and they patronize small independents.

Both Canadian and American analysts and stats-gathering agencies have documented the rebound of in-store spending over the past year as people rediscovered the benefits of looking at the physical thing in a shop instead of on a screen from an online catalogue. “The retail sector surprisingly is making fairly strong headway,” says Thomas. “With the frustration of returning merchandise and the anguish you can go through, a lot of people are rushing back to touch and feel. Malls have responded, made themselves more open.”

Amy Robinson, the executive director of LOCO BC, a nonprofit that focuses on small-business issues, agrees that in-person shopping is seeing a comeback, especially here. “B.C. consumers emphasize more seeing the product in person,” she says. A survey by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business this year found that people in B.C. and Saskatchewan are the most likely of all Canadians to shop at a local store—only about one in five, still, but certainly better than the tiny 7 percent of Albertans in that category.

There's a cloud, though. Many small retailers are thinking of throwing in the towel, says Robinson. They can't find labour, inflation has been a killer, many of them owe money on their pandemic loans, and commercial leases continue to be mind-bogglingly expensive as tenants are required to cover the property taxes on buildings where assessed value is pegged to development potential.

If that incipient trend swells, it could mean a kind of mass extinction of small retail in the region. So what happens in the next 30 years will depend on what different levels of government, along with the private sector, do to sustain them. In the ideal 2050, cities have found ways to ensure a place for small, local businesses by creating new policies to support them: tax relief, requirements for suitable spaces built into new developments, more public messaging about their important role. And private developers could help by finding more ways to include small, local businesses in their projects—something Robinson says is starting to happen (see Trend 3).