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Retail 2018: Now Comes The Real Reckoning

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There is some dispute over whether more stores opened during 2017 than were closed. IHL says yes. Fung Retail Tech says no. Mostly I say "who cares"?

Either way, it's clear that the retail landscape is changing rapidly, causing some retailers to prune their store counts, shutter locations en masse or liquidate entirely. What's unfortunate--and not the least bit useful--is the tendency to declare that physical retail is dying and that we are going through some sort of "retail apocalypse." The facts clearly do not support this notion. Similarly devoid of substance and nuance is the proclamation that e-commerce is eating the world and that virtually all "traditional" retailers are falling victim to the "Amazon Effect."

What IS occurring at the macro-level is three-fold. First, the irrational expansion of retail space during the past two decades is finally correcting itself. Second, as retailers better understand the physical requirements to support a world where online is a significant and growing sales channel, many are optimizing their footprints to better align space with demand. Third, and far more important, is that retail brands that failed to innovate and create a meaningfully relevant and remarkable value proposition are rapidly going the way of the horse-drawn carriage.

A look at either the IHL or the FRT data reveals precisely the same picture. Lots of physical stores are being opened on the part of brands that have a winning formula, both in the value sector (think TJX, Aldi, Costco, Dollar General) and at the other end of the spectrum (think Nordstrom, Sephora, Ulta). Overwhelmingly, the retailers that are closing large number of stores are those that have operated in the vast undifferentiated middle. And it's becoming increasingly clear that it's death in the middle.

Physical retail is not dead. Boring retail is.

I believe the majority of over-capacity from excessive building has now been dealt with (or will be as retailers do typical post-holiday store closings). I believe most sophisticated retailers have a clear understanding of the go-forward physical requirements to best support a harmonized (what some prefer to call "omni-channel") strategy.  They get the critical role that physical stores play in supporting the online business and vice versa. This implies that retailers that have fundamentally sound value propositions won't be closing very many stores this year. And the best positioned brands will defy the bogus retail apocalypse narrative and continue opening stores--in some cases large numbers of them.

The flip side is that retailers with unremarkable concepts will continue their march toward oblivion. Some will hang around longer than they should--I'm looking at you Sears--because they have assets to sell off to raise cash, all the while delaying the inevitable. Store closings are a panacea, not a fix.

Similarly, many pure-play online brands with unsustainable economics will either figure out a viable bricks & clicks strategy (e.g. Warby Parker), get acquired by the digitally-native brand bail out fund known as Walmart or go 'buh 'bye having burned through both their cash and all the greater fools.

For me, last year was a large scale, inevitable pruning away of the brush. Now in 2018, with the obvious losers having been closed in 2017, we get to see far more clearly the brands that truly have longevity, be they omni-channel" or pure-plays. Now we get to witness the real reckoning.

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