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Comment by sirius87 | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if this is a short-term strategy to force commercial property rents further down, and re-enter when they hit a feasible low.

In India, GAP apparently uses their retail stores in an omnichannel strategy to "warehouse" products closer to customers in an attempt to provide next-day delivery. [1]

[1] https://yourstory.com/2021/06/fashion-brands-omnichannel-fli... (paywalled, use reader-mode)

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> In India, GAP apparently uses their retail stores in an omnichannel strategy to "warehouse" products closer to customers in an attempt to provide next-day delivery.

I believe this is the eventual move a lot of brick and mortar stores are going to make to compete with Amazon. I've been told by a Best Buy manager their end goal is to turn a majority of their stores into fulfilment centers.

This is what Sainsbury's appear to be doing - consolidating some of their Argos branches with larger Sainsburys stores and added general fulfillment centres. Not sure if this is across the country, but it was interesting to see the apparently-quick turnaround during Lockdown at some local stores here.

I wondered if they were just looking at how Uniqlo operate. Here in the UK, Uniqlo only have stores in London. You can find one or two other cities - Oxford, Manchester, but that's it. For anywhere else you have to shop online.

You might need to do that in India, in the UK it's so small relatively speaking that a couple of distribution centers in the right places can probably serve the entire country.

Or just stick it in the post / hand over to courier.

We already have oodles of those - you can see them off major motorway arteries and intersections.

I think this is more about last-mile fulfillment.

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