The Next Phase of the Retail Apocalypse: Stores Reborn as E-Commerce Warehouses | Hacker News Reader

The Next Phase of the Retail Apocalypse: Stores Reborn as E-Commerce Warehouses

wsj.com

146 pointslxm80 comments

I got a buddy who works for DSCO, a company which, among other things, sells software that makes it easy for brick-and-mortar stores to sell products online and have the products ship from the retailer's warehouses. Around the time of the pandemic, they change their software so that the stores themselves would look like warehouses to the software. That way, they could ship from any of these so-called warehouses and then support ship-from-store on the websites of their customers. This functionality was sort of in in demand before the pandemic, but many potential customer said "no thanks, we'll build it ourselves". After the pandemic hit, everyone went scrambling to DSCO for help to support ship-from-store.

This article seems to talk about the next logical step away from ship-from-store: turn the store into a shipping yard.

Honestly I wish there was 'ship-a-replacement' to store.

If something is on Amazon, why can't I pick up from Home Deport and have them ship inventory to Home Depot to replace the thing I just picked up...

They're competitors, and presumably are selling the item at different prices. If Amazon is cheaper, HD would have to give you the item for less than they normally sell it. If Amazon is more expensive, why not buy the thing directly from HD, you're going there to pick it up anyway.

Amazon used to always be cheaper. not any more. amazon has realized people shop it for convenience and not mainly for price.

If the item is at Home Depot and you want to pick it up... why not just get it from Home Depot?

Pricing.

How would you guarantee the item is not a counterfeit/broken in transit/transported at the right temperatures/etc?

Kohls has been doing exactly this a while with Amazon:

https://corporate.kohls.com/news/archive-/2019/july/kohl-s-n...

>I got a buddy who works for DSCO, a company which, among other things, sells software that makes it easy for brick-and-mortar stores to sell products online and have the products ship from the retailer's warehouses.

I always wondered why more stores didn't do this. I had Best Buy have another store ship directly to my home when phones I wanted to buy weren't available in the local location, Bealls Florida fulfill an online order from three different retail stores, and I think I read a while ago of Walmart planning on doing this to fight Amazon Prime 2-day shipping but, otherwise, any online order would come from some warehouse somewhere no matter how many or few retail locations that company had near me. Your friend's experience of companies trying (and mostly failing, obviously) to build such capability inhouse would help explain this.

Such capability would also help retail customers by improving the accuracy of in-store inventories that appear online.

The reason is that retail stores don't have the space to store products and it's expected by the consumer that when you walk into a store products should be in-stock. All inventory at a retail location is supposed to be just-in-time and for the area that they service so they do not support the warehouse model. Store like Hot Topic here in the US have been shipping from stores for some time and the idea behind this is that both warehouse and retail adhere to the just-in-time model.

That way product is no more likely to sit in a warehouse than it is at the retail location, there's no ship backs and markdowns are taken at the retail location. As a result inventory stays fresh and there's little to no overstock.

This does not work for all retailers as you can imagine, for for boutique stores with a limited number of SKU's it's enough to keep them afloat while still turning inventory and keeping retail locations staffed.

>I always wondered why more stores didn't do this.

It's not an efficient way to ship stuff. Wandering around a store picking an order takes much longer than an optimized warehouse.

Square footage is much more expensive retail than in a warehouse. So the area (if there's even room for it) where you pack and ship stuff costs more.

Shipping is more expensive because you are doing a few boxes a day instead of a semi-truck a day to UPS/FedEx/USPS

It just doesn't work that well. Fine as a stop gap for a small retailer dipping their toes in the online market. But for any sort of scale the warehouse model is much better.

I think the article is way off here. Yeah, some Sam's Clubs in the middle of nowhere were converted and a high end retailer has the margins to absorb the inefficiency. But the idea that existing retail is going to convert to warehouses at any sort of scale is laughable. The real estate costs are prohibitive and they'll end up somewhere an hour away where land is cheap.

Wouldn't delivery be cheaper? Why are they shipping locally?

I'm guessing having your own delivery trucks would be cheaper, but only if you're doing enough volume (like, multiple packages per neighborhood per week). Walmart could probably get there, but not sure about smaller stores (even Best Buy).

They also have to be shipped to the store. End-to-end shipping costs won't be that different between the warehouse model or the retail model.

Hmm so why set up shop in a retail outlet then? Why not just ship directly from the warehouse?

If i'm understanding, the article is talking about using the retail outlet as a warehouse, where you have the items shipped from a warehouse to your retail outlet, and then shipped again to buyers.

Let me clarify. I agree that in general having a centralized warehouse handle online orders is better than having retail stores do so, for the same reason why FedEx and UPS are more efficient in using a central transit hub in Kentucky/Tennessee even for an overnight package going from one location to another in the same city.

But surely even better is both? Have an online warehouse handle most orders, but have the inventory system integrated across warehouses and stores, so that if it turns out that an item is a) available in a store in the same metro area as the customer, and/or b) is out of stock in the warehouse, a store employee can pick and pack the order during a free moment and have the order arrive at the customer the next day?

Retail usually operates on thin margins. It's probably not cost effective to do that.

I’d add that order picking from retail shelves is pretty disruptive to retail customers with any volume. Every trip to the grocery store sees the popular aisle clogged with an employee picking 6 or 12 orders. Meanwhile the in-person customers stack up waiting for the picker to finish. It wouldn’t be so bad except the stores also put all kinds of impulse buy islands into the flow of traffic so that you can’t even transit the block.

IMO stores should pick by department, not order, then in the back room use put-to-light to divvy up the picks.

Expensive fulfillment warehouses. If you watch the 2000 interview of Jeff Bezos - the reason he predicted he would beat retail was because the cost of square foot of his fulfillment centers was a fraction of what retail pays.

I'm willing to pay Home Depot/Lowes/Best Buy/Target/Costco/REI/Nordstroms/Apple multiples of what Amazon would cost to ensure I don't have to waste my time searching through uncurated AliExpress garbage.

Yeah Although those stores also suffer from the problem of wading through products to find the one you need, They’re better than newegg and much better than Walmart or amazon.

For everyday items I agree but for niche (including high-end) items Amazon is often hard to beat - the competition is either local specialty stores that are not really searchable online, may be set up to cater to professionals/businesses rather than the general public, and/or might not even exist at all anymore; or other online retailers that don't necessarily have the cheap and fast logistics that Amazon does.

That’s funny, my trust profile is exactly the opposite — I’ll use Amazon in a heartbeat for kitty litter, but if I’m ordering a camera lens/PC part/nicer clothing, I’m ordering from the manufacturer/a specialty site.

I think for me, the more everyday a purchase is, the less I care about if the purchase goes wrong in some small way?

I do see where you’re coming from, though - I’ve many times gone through the process of:

“I wonder if amazon has any <niche item>?”

...

“Oh, Amazon has literally dozens of different <niche item>s, cool”

That's interesting. Do you generally not check if the item is sold by Amazon.com itself?

For me, I still prefer Amazon if it is a high value item, I check the seller though. I prefer to have my contact information/payment information stored by a company I can trust to keep it safe and in as few places as possible.

I've stopped using Amazon because almost nothing is sold directly by Amazon itself. I've been forced to use Amazon gift cards but I immediately told my friend afterwards that I spent 15% more than if I had bought it from an online retailer with a better reputation than Amazon.

> almost nothing is sold directly by Amazon itself

What do you base that statement on? I order lots of stuff from Amazon and almost all of it is sold by Amazon and not a third-party. Sometimes I do have to pick Amazon from the list of alternate sellers.

I got my Nikon 200-500mm tele lens off Amazon, and it was sold by Amazon. It was also, by its serial number, a gray-market item manufactured for the Chinese market, and not covered by warranty when sold in the US. But you can't find that out until you have it in your hands.

It worked perfectly as I got it, and the model had been on the market past the early peak of the bathtub curve, so I kept it. Still works perfectly today, too. But it taught me a valuable lesson about how far Amazon can be trusted on high-ticket items.

These days the only camera gear I get from Amazon is trivial niche stuff like eyepiece diopters that aren't worth anyone's trouble to gray-market or counterfeit. For everything else, there's my local camera store, or B&H or Adorama.

There's certainly a profile of relatively high end, readily faked, mass-market products that I would never buy on Amazon. Apple iPhone chargers are the classic example, but most name-brand fashion qualifies too.

Same here. These days Amazon has been demoted as my store for everyday items I don't really care about. I enjoy the free next day delivery and the fact that I don't need to register at another shop, but for items I care about (in my case it's often bike gear, audio equipment, clothing, hardware) I will always prefer the countless shops specialized in that particular product category.

In Germany they're mostly just as quick to deliver and sane return policies are required by federal/european law. And most importantly their inventory is way better - organized, curated, categorized and genuine.

true. becoming more and more leery of knock off items on amazon.

man, i often hear people complain about aliexpress, i just don't understand it. i've been buying and using headscratchingly cheap products from china through aliexpress, and seriously as long as you're not a complete newbie to online shopping, it's not that difficult to find a legitimate store selling perfectly usable generic or unbranded products at a fraction of the cost of the branded version and they all work just fine. i've easily saved thousands of dollars over the years this way. i don't understand why people are so against this - a lot of what they buy from amazon or supermarkets in fact come from china as well.

I think Aliexpress is great. Amazon is a marked up aliexpress, and that’s not great.

When I pay a markup, I expect something extra like curating of products so I know what the low-mid-high tier options are without sifting through tons of search results and reviews. Or at least not commingling of stock, so I know what I’m getting.

Pretty much. If I search Amazon for something and there's a bunch of brands I don't know selling the exact same product with their brand name screen printed in the exact same location? Just go to AliExpress and buy it there.

Is that stuff tested by Underwriters Laboratories?

It makes sense that if Amazon is just dumping the same stuff under fake brands, why not go to the source. But anything that uses electricity could burn your house down, couldn't it?

i mean... that's a legit theoretical concern, but so far i've bought many dirt cheap electronic products from ali for years and so far they've all worked as advertised.

I bought two pairs of sunglasses from Amazon recently. Different brands, different pictures, different price. Ended up with two pairs of the exact same glasses...

Best Buy has a warehouse near me that will allow you to do order pickup directly from them. Vast warehouse outside Spanaway in Washington. "No retail services are available here" but they will bring appliances etc to the loading dock for you (no idea whether you could use it for smaller items but most likely).

When the physical stores are open to the public too, the incremental cost can be zero.

This is why grocery E-commerce distribution is usually done from a store estate (with the exception of occado, which has a higher cost to serve but also gives a better resulting service).

> When the physical stores are open to the public too, the incremental cost can be zero.

Wow this is so far off (as someone who works at an e-commerce company). Optimizing a warehouse is incredibly difficult and time consuming and often involves expensive and specialized equipment like sorters. Wayfair for instance STILL has only had like 2 profitable quarters and they specialize in e-commerce and fulfillment. Having your employees go pick things off of shelves and pack them and figure out which truck to go on is not a simple problem.

You simply aren't going to make any money if your business model is having employees physically go manually pick stuff off shelves and package them in boxes and ship them at $10 an hour.

Well I am more interested in how local governments handle the tax loss when some of these businesses leave town to consolidate elsewhere. Big box stores and their like were always a guarantee boost with not only the store but businesses which built up in the same or close by centers.

What remains won't be vastly different, grocery will likely be the big anchor for most strip malls with small restaurants, personal care, and such filling out the rest. Pretty sure the Dollar* type stores and pharmacies will still keep their spot. Two generations and the gas stations and their tax base will be gone too but that is a different situation.

There may never be a better time to not live in cities. With the move to BEV transportation and online everything from work, shopping, and play, it will free up people to have more choices.

Well it's pretty difficult to avoid paying sales tax on the major ecommerce platforms now in many if not all major markets. So they will receive their taxes as normal. Instead of best buy, it will be more mailing depots & amazon sending them sales tax without the cost of providing services to those big retail centers. We don't even know if those warehouses will have many jobs, since amazon is pushing towards automating them more and more.

Suburbia also costs more to service from a cities perspective, with more pavement, miles of sewer pipes and so on, so we might very well see suburbs get more expensive than the cities too, since revenue starts becoming more about how many people live in a city vs the location of retail centers.

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/4/27/this-is-the-en...

As everyone moves to e-commerce, a lot of companies are going to be burned by counterfeit products finding their way into their warehouses. This is a problem Amazon just kinda ignores, because it has such a high volume that they can just accept returns no-questions-asked. But when store-that-is-accustomed-to-in-person-sales suddenly has a bunch of people returning items that are wrong, they won't know what to do. Are the customers scamming them, sending back the wrong item? Was it the supplier? The manufacturer's warehouse? Their own warehouse? It's a tough problem, perhaps there's room for a 3rd party company that only traces the source of counterfeits.

That's just for the products that can be proven to be fakes. There is also a lot that just are shoddy that you cannot prove, in which case the store loses a repeat customer.

Amazon has already lost me for products where I care about quality. The Pilot G2-05 pens I buy in store ($5 each in Australia) have never had any issues and all worked flawlessly until I drained them of ink. The Amazon 12 pack hasn't had a single pen reach the end of its life.

My favorite pens are pentel energel 0.7. Dark black ink, lowest writing effort, never blobby or scratchy. I get them from Amazon, but would be devastated if they started be counterfeited.

>As everyone moves to e-commerce, a lot of companies are going to be burned by counterfeit products finding their way into their warehouses

And how is this any different than the status quo?

Walmart, Best Buy, basically everyone but Amazon already tracks which inbound shipments correspond to which purchases so they can keep their brand reputations unpolluted by shoddy widgets and cut unreliable suppliers from their supply chain if need be.

This is a solved problem. It's just that solving it comes with some overhead and a particular major player thinks it's easier to not deal with the overhead up front and instead handle it after the consumer has the goods. It's yet to be proven how sustainable this approach is.

They better make the experience much better. They don't pay the gig workers nearly enough to care and get this stuff right. I don't blame the pickers at all. The stuff in retail stores isn't labeled for warehouse style picking.

When my wife sends me to the store with the list, I have a hard enough time getting exactly what she wants, and I already have a pretty good idea what she wants since I live with her.

A poor hourly gig worker has no chance of getting it right.

My local Vons keeps sending me $20 off coupons if I use their delivery service. I've tried; 3 times. All failures.

First, their UI is confusing. I didn't realize at first that I could specify—for each item—if I would accept a substitution or not. And I got about 70% of my order right, 15% wrong, and 15% missing.

The second time, I diligently went through each item in my cart and set my substitution preference. This is another fail. The choices are (1) No substitutions; (2) substitute with same brand, different size; or (3) substitute with different brand, same size.

What I would like is “(4) Cancel the entire order if you can't fulfill this item” and “(5) These x items are all-or-none” But that's a logistical nightmare I assume. They're not going to have the pickers drop the cart as soon as they realize they can't find item #23 on my list. Nor can they criss-cross the store verifying the must-haves before moving on with the rest of the list.

And the failures are not just missing items. Substitution preferences are subjective and personal. On my first order, they didn't have Diet Coke. So I got regular Coke instead. When I got wise to setting the preferences, it still resulted in getting the chips, but no dip.

Perfect, real-time inventory won't solve this. I can order an item that's in stock, then get "front-run" by a shopper who's actually in the store.

FWIW, I have these issues regardless if it's Instacart or Vons' own delivery personnel (They use both). And I don't blame the picker one bit. I used to shop for my Dad when he could no longer drive. He was just as disappointed with my results as I am with theirs :)

Why do people keep posting paid articles here? Most people don't have subscriptions

Most paywalls are trivial to bypass with a new browser profile or deleting cookies or disabling JavaScript. Some like the WSJ paywall can be bypassed using archive sites like archive.is, archive.org or outline.com. For example:

https://archive.is/20200720034756/https://www.wsj.com/articl...

If you're not paying to read it, someone else is paying to have you read it.

And if you are paying to read it, someone else is still paying to have you read it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic.

Because there's no rule against it, a significant enough minority do have (perhaps corporate network-wide) subscriptions, and the paywalls can often be bypassed anyway for those that don't.

It's going to happen, this is actually why I've re-focused on Supply Chain/Logistics as there is so much room for potential growth and re-capturing losses within them as I saw working in the Automotive side of Logistics and Supply Chain a few years back.

We're going through a very unique, but much needed, transition right now that will likely bring about the automated warehouses, distribution hubs, and transport depots we always read about in books and and sci-fi lore--and that so many feared. It also re-enforces the need for UBI now more than ever, something that not long ago was though to be impossible, yet is being pilot tested by Andrew Yang and Jack Dorsey as well as other places in the US, and even by YC itself!

I'm actually optimistic, and believe if we play it right it could in fact be the seeds that allow for a Post-scarcity economy one day on Earth, as so much is lost in critical supply chains, and having these over-extended international based ones may have done more harm than good, as they accelerated a race to the bottom system in terms of price and quality (even on critical things like Medical Supplies/Drugs) as so much went to China but also made most countries entirely dependent on the CCP and has way more Geo-political consequences than we can predict.

Right now I'm taking a course in Supply Chain Operations and my final will be analyzing the consequences from the displacement of critical manufactured goods (PPE) to China and the affects it has had during the onset of COVID, and now also recently due to the massive flooding in Wuhan and the surrounding areas of China [1].

The most optimistic delays in lead-time are 2-3 weeks, but if COVID showed anything, as we saw with Medical staff in the US and even Australia having to go months without PPE and wearing trash bags in lieu of actual medical grade PPE, is that its best to actually double that to get an accurate time.

But it wasn't all bad as it also saw many 3D printing hobbyists use the technology for ACTUALLY MEANINGFUL potential instated of printing trinkets you use to clutter a work desk. And some other companies, mostly in the automotive Industry, pivoted to making breathing apparatuses.

1: https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/record-china-fl...

> I've re-focused on Supply Chain/Logistics as there is so much room for potential growth and re-capturing losses within them

Could you expand on this some more?

I realized you spoke a bit about this issue in the rest of your post, but I would love to read more specifics.

> Could you expand on this some more?

I could talk about this for hours, but I'll keep it as short as I'm still in midterms week. The basics of Lean and Sigma Six are damn near antithetical to the the Chinese model business model of flooding the Market with sub-par quality, albeit incredibly cheap products. There are many reasons why this has worked for them so far, but in the case with PPE it is literately a life and death situation so it should be one of the few Industries that remain in the nation.

So, rather than fumble with delays in leadtime, bad QC/QA and constant shipping delays it is my contention that trying to bypass these incredible losses [1] is a much better solution for all involved (including the Environment), which inevitably leads to this [2] and we finally accept this [3] and we can strategize with key talent that is now fleeing Hong Kong due to the CCP's constant belligerence as they flow into Taiwan, UK, Australia and the US and help them create far more viable and sustainable business models with proper equipment and eventually displace the need for China in this sector.

I think it can be done for food as well, as that is what I was primarily focused on during my Ag apprenticeship (local, sustainable food/Ag supply chains) and my return to culinary as I worked on farm to table models in Europe and the US, and then tried to gather more info from Big Food Multinationals when I was at IBM's Blockchain Lab program, which failed to live up to it's potential and I got fed up with the status quo that made it's 'food safety' program a total farce and instead returned to the Culinary Industry after I shuttered my startup. It was a shame as they had so many Food multi-national's excited about the tech and would it could do to for their bottom line: consider 40% of all food in transport is lost due to perishability and fluctuations in temp/humidity.

Had my plan worked I would have been at SpaceX right now trying to learn their internal logistical network of their food and beverage program to eventually join Squareroots in the future, I was working at Kimbal's place, and try to help be a part of the Team to create a sustainable model for the container gardens for Mars colonization. Suffice it to say I can really nerd out on that sector more than PPE but I'd probably end up doing a Grad Level dissertation instead of actually doing the work.

1: https://www.businessinsider.in/india/news/after-50000-ppe-ki...

2: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52092395

3: https://nypost.com/2020/04/18/why-america-desperately-needs-...

Fun!

Thank you for the reply — it got my gears turning in a very good way.

Best of luck with mid-terms!

Ship-from-retail-store doesn't work very well. You get some random subset of what you ordered. The online ordering system needs to know the inventory to make this work right. Right now, I can get quick delivery of a random subset of what I order from Safeway, Doordash, or Costco. They send some random gig worker into the store and mark up the prices. I'd rather have two-day delivery of exactly what I ordered.

So how good are these new outfits at that?

Can you expand on what you mean by some random subset of what you ordered?

I think they meant "random subset of what you can order"

No, they mean random subset of what you tried to order. If you use Instacart, at least in California, there is a good chance that 1/3 of your items will be "unavailable" and they just won't get it.

The problem is, if you order flour, milk, and sugar, and then they don't bring the sugar, you can't make the thing you wanted to make. But you also can't return the partial order.

Got it, that makes sense.

And that's legal? The more you know...

Speaking as a California scrooge, I still prefer it to the alternatives honestly. My neighborhood has one mini-target and three local grocers one of which is a co-op. All three local grocers are garbage, their quality is fine but nothing wild and most of the price is for pretty looking food that doesn't scare the local yoga moms. Also, because they are all small and the target had to agree not to sell certain things the food variety available is not stellar. Thanks to Instacart I can order from places with real prices and a wide range of grocery products. Instacart is especially great because Amazon Fresh, although better than the local options for variety, is also wildly over priced and so if I want delivery+thrift Instacart is basically the only game in town because the bar is that low. I am thrilled at the idea that some of these local shops might finally have to adapt thanks to the increasing presence of delivery services.

You order a hammer and a saw, one store has the hammer, another the saw. They are one order but may arrive different days and it’s not always well coördinated or communicated with customer.

If you do these online orders from retail stores, a lot of times they just bring you some of what you order and then tell you the rest is "unavailable". But you can't cancel the order because they already picked it for you.

This is more of an issue with instacart. The vast majority of online groceries in the U.K. are served from supermarkets by supermarkets and the fulfilment rate is 95%+ with decent substitutions (typically a free upgrade to a more ‘premium’ product that you can decline at the doorstep)

TLDR: I think in house shopping services are your best bet and they will only get better as companies invest more and more in them. These will hopefully replace Instacart.

I have ordered all of my groceries since March using various online services because my wife and I are both high risk for covid (asthma + pregnant). This includes Instacart, Whole Foods Delivery, Whole Foods pickup, and now Stop and Shop Pickup (effectively Peapod delivery).

Instacart is by far the worst in terms of reliability. Sometimes the substitutions make absolutely no sense whatsoever. The integration with the stores just aren't good enough and it relies too much on the individual shopper to to pick something reasonable it seems. I have had good shoppers and I have bad shoppers that take too much leeway. I don't blame them though, its just what it is. In my experience the item catalog for my local stores is also inconsistent too. Items with the same name at different prices for example. What am I buying?

The most reliable system for me is Whole Foods pickup. I have to go to a whole foods that is about ~20 minutes away instead of 10 minutes away, but the pickup basically has unlimited slots. I have never not been able to pick any slot I want, even same day. Delivery is much tougher to get slots, so I don't even try anymore. Whole Foods lets you select the actual item you want them to substitute with, although they only give you the closest ~5 options, which sometimes aren't perfect. For example, if you are trying to get lactose free yogurt, not all the replacement options will be lactose free. You also can't talk to the shopper, you can only approve or deny substitutions when you leave the item on "substitute best available". The cons basically come down to selection and price. The selection seems a lot more limited than in store which can be annoying. Prices are obviously Whole Foods prices. Another unfortunate thing is that you can't tip the shoppers. I tried to leave money in my trunk for them to take, but its against the rules I guess, so some would take it and some wouldn't. I ended up stopping because I didn't want to put people in a position where they they could get in trouble. You can tip on delivery and I always assumed that some of that tip went to the shopper, but I guess not.

Stop and Shop pickup is a close second. It's run by their Peapod service, but you just pickup curbside instead of waiting for delivery slot. Much better selection and prices, but there is no way to pick substitutions, you can only say "Do not substitute this item". I will probably use this more often going forward to supplement my Whole Foods orders. I can hit both stores for pickup in less than hour. The people that do the shopping and delivery curbside can accept tips.

This is not really the next phase - retail has been on a downward trajectory since the first online sale was made. The spiral down just buffered by a global economy that was growing.

Working with Westfield back in 2008 there was talks already of redesigning mall footprints to have smaller stores that can act as pop-up shops/ collection points etc. However there was an overall equilibrium achieved as malls started playing into the idea that their differentiation was on "experience".

Shopping and going to the mall remains a highly social activity. And I believe will survive well past the pandemic. And perhaps stores will be smaller individually and act as both in-store sales, collection points for online purchases and pop-up stores to market new products.

I think malls might be sustainable with just clothing and restaurants (and the Apple Store).

Local stores still can compete with speed and shopping experience. Ie the future of stores is hybrid local/e-commerce.

I hope that there will be both types of stores in the future for the city center to flourish. Imagine going as a tourist to a city which only had e-commerce and not stores that would probably not be as fun experience as a live city with local shopping.

I might be the only person who dislikes traveling. To me, traveling is an expensive way to explore food, museums and maybe some overcrowded landmarks. I went to Paris, Tokyo, and all we did was followed a guidebook of one touristy place after another.

Instead, I prefer to save that money to do something here locally. Maybe go get a nice dinner at the French Laundry. Or rent a convertible and cruise around in Californian weather. Yes, just because it’s local doesn’t mean that it’s any less. If I lived in Paris, I would want to check out my own city thoroughly. Explore corners of Paris every weekend.

Traveling is overrated IMO. I hate the logistics, I somewhat dislike the experience as a whole but maybe some places are fun. Especially like going to Asian cities where it is a whole another world.

Here in America where I live, there is so much stuff to see already. Just do a cross country road trip for 3 weeks. Totally unmatched experience.

Tourists, no matter how “covert”, are basically treated like a commodity and no one really gives a shit about you as a tourist to come and explore the culture.

Tourism was incredible 40 years ago probably when mobility wasn’t that accessible. $400 flights to Asia and Europe has killed it for me just by the virtue of explosion of tourism. I want genuine connection with foreign cultures. Off beaten paths are actually quite beaten up, despite of what you think.

> I might be the only person who dislikes traveling. To me, traveling is an expensive way to explore food, museums and maybe some overcrowded landmarks. I went to Paris, Tokyo, and all we did was followed a guidebook of one touristy place after another.

> Just do a cross country road trip for 3 weeks. Totally unmatched experience.

It sounds like you do like travelling, but dislike the tourism industry. It’s quite possible to get the same tourism experience you describe for Paris in any major US city. It’s also possible to travel in Europe without feeling like you’re visiting a theme park— ditch the guidebook and just wander.

Yeah, maybe not do the standard American thing and visit 5 countries in 2 weeks. Pick one of them and visit more places than just the capital.

I'm weary of travel too, and most weary of doing touristy things. If I can I like to plonk myself into places for extended periods and take my time wandering around.

For the most part I agree that travel is overrated. Most translations I've read of Lao Tzu suggests that he agrees too - we're in exalted company on this one.

> Just do a cross country road trip for 3 weeks.

Apparently your definition of "travel" means "leave the country where I live".

The USA is almost 3000 miles across and on the order of 1000 miles from top to bottom. It isn't surprising that there would be a lot of stuff to visit and see within its borders, but a "cross country road trip" is hardly not travelling.

If you were in Europe and took the equivalent journey, you'd be more than 1/3rd of the way across Russia.

"I live in a big country, and I'm happy to explore it rather than fly overseas" might be a more accurate thing to say than "I [... ] dislike travelling".

This is becoming more common in retail now. It requires a common set of systems and databases for both the retail and eCommerce business. (Side note - this is the scope of The Phoenix Project)

Article appeared on another site without paywall:

https://www.marketscreener.com/WALMART-INC-4841/news/The-Nex...

Bless you kind stranger

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