To Live, Retailers Should Innovate

Lately, the death of retail as we know it is everywhere on the internet. Big brands disappearing overnight, stores shutting down by dozens daily, malls becoming ghost towns and everybody is pointing at the internet being the reason behind this.

Well, I am a big believer of brick-and-mortar retail and no matter how big the internet and Amazon.com will get, in my opinion retail is here to stay but conditionally.

If retailers want to live, they need and should innovate. The beauty of brick-and-mortar retail is the flexibility.

The flexibility of changing what is not working, finding new ways to make their stores better and more attractive, spending more time on their shoppers behavior, re-engineering their concepts, analyzing their data, adapting new communications channels, taking a step back and looking at the wider picture of the situation and correct things.

It is not true that the internet is killing the retail when the internet retailers are opening physical shops. This simply means the actual business model of the retailers is not working anymore and they need change.

Change is not easy, especially for the old school retailers. with large, very large stores, hundreds of employees on the floor, endless aisles and a heavy machine to operate. The new retail business model should be lean to survive, with a very lean structure just to quickly adapt to changes, move on and live a happy retail life.