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Comment by lhamil64 | Hacker News Reader

It sounds like we have a similar situation. I've been wondering if these kinds of glasses would work for me but it just seems like such a hassle to order a pair to try just to end up returning them if they don't work. I wish they were sold in a store that I could just walk into and try them for a minute.

FWIW, I use a monitor arm that's mounted on the front left side of my desk (my dad also modified my desk so this would work) so I can pull it as close as I need. It does mean I can't push it back to a normal monitor distance but I'm the only one using my PC so that's not a problem. Oddly enough, I recently got cataract surgery so now I have a lens that makes me focus further away, but now text is too small to read at that distance so I have to use readers to focus closer and use the arm.. seems a little silly but it mostly works out.

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  >  I wish they were sold in a store that I could just walk into and try them for a minute.

I've constantly wondered why this doesn't really exist. Not even just with AR or VR but with lots of products. I thought that early on in the transition to more online purchasing that it was well understood that people were still visiting stores so that they can inspect items before purchase. There always seemed to be a weird perverse incentive where for a given store their online prices would be cheaper than those in store. Combined with wider selection of sizes and styles, it felt weird not to buy online, especially if you were not in a major city. Employees would even tell you this! Themselves being unable to just handle the "online" sale for you (baffling...). Malls offered a lot more business value than just facilitating direct purchases. They do a lot to build brands, loyalty, and advertise to customers.

Being a lanky kinda guy I could never find clothes in my sizes in store but it was still quite helpful to see the difference between certain materials and would often lead to buying a more expensive version than another. Without the stores, it just seems to make a market of lemons[0], and I think that's kinda apt given general consumer frustration. You can't rely on reviews and you can't rely on images or even product descriptions...

How the fuck am I supposed to know what I'm buying?

My hypothesis is that some bean counters saw that sales were plummeting in stores and concluded that they should then close them. Having the inability to recognize that the purpose of the store had changed, despite them likely using the stores in the new fashion themselves. Hard to make effective decisions if the only viewpoint you have is that of a spreadsheet...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons

Several other factors probably pushing the bean counters:

  * Real estate in high-traffic areas, especially in malls (do those still exist?) can be extremely expensive.
  * With retail stores, shoplifting is the business's problem, after the switch to ecommerce, a lot of theft is shifted to being the customer's problem (porch pirates)
  * Customer service staff in the store are likely more expensive than outsourcing call centers and now AI is well on the way to cutting out most of those jobs.

So while I doubt they completely overlooked the value of a physical presence, they probably calculated that it's an acceptable tradeoff.

I think Apple does a really good job at blending their physical stores and their online business into a very seamless experience. Not many companies can operate at that level of excellence. Although I have many complaints about Apple's business practices, however, their retail stores and customer service experience are not among them.

I'm quite aware that stores cost money. I'm not sure why you'd think I didn't.

I agree that Apple is doing it right and is kinda what I'm talking about. They do focus on the experience even though I'm sure most sales translate to online sales. They do understand that the physical presence generates many of these sales. It's not trivial to measure like direct sales but it is measurable.

I'll admit Apple has an advantage that it isn't a franchise (pretty sure?). But that doesn't mean the other companies couldn't adapt to the new environment. But clearly a lot of them failed due to this. The experience still matters to customers but if they don't have many choices they still gotta do what they gotta do

One thing I've noticed is that some stores are, as you ponder, indeed franchises.

In some franchises, store owners get a vote on change. They also have no inventive or desire to be a mere showcase for purchases happening elsewhere, such as online.

Combine this with a sometimes contracted inability for the company to "compete" with franchises, and you get some very weird behaviour.

And the of course, as people and politics are involved, you may see non-optimal, status quo results from votes.

It's only really been 15 years, since retailers have really seen a notable dive in store sales, and the last 5 years being the most harsh.

Meatspace speed is slow. Most of the world's behaviour is ossified compared to people on HN.

In other words, the Internet is fairly new. I think eventuality we'll see some stabilization here, over the next 10 years.

An example...

Used to be, before opening trade with China, that most cultery was made in the US. There were in fact 4 or 5 main manufacturers of cutlery.

Once the cheap stuff came in, this all collapsed. All of them shut or went bankrupt.

Yet out of the ashes one emerged, and I think a second now. The market was in such turmoil, sales collapsed so fast, that they all weakened at once.

But at least one can exist.

My point is, we're in this period of chaos now. It'll sort out I think.

Apple makes gobsmack amount of profit from both devices and gambling apps(they don't do games) that easily cover costs of demo units. It'll be harder if you only sell only one type of fancy low-volume gadget at $499.

1) Why does Apple make "gobsmack amount(s) of profit"? Perhaps there's a strategy that leads to this. I believe the memes version is "Says 'because they're rich'; refuses to elaborate; leaves"

2) My example was clothing. I certainly think this makes sense as a setting in such an environment. Let you look and try. Directly sell most common sizes, transfer to online purchase for others. You can even have employees measure customers to get the right fits! Now you could even do the virtual tryons. This is very different than racks of clothes.

3) I think you forgot about stores like Sharper Image, Electronics Boutique, or Brookstone. Customers frequently would go into these stores to just see all the random gadgets and stuff. I can certainly remember going into Brookstone dozens of times yet not actually buying anything. Thing is, what these stores were good at was advertising products. But they were terrible at selling them because you could always find the same things somewhere else for cheaper, like Sears.

Like I've said, the value of many of the physical stores was not just in direct sales. That was a fine metric in the old days, but things changed and so did many other things. My original comment was a claim that a myopic view was applied, hyper focusing on the limited direct sales metric. But coke doesn't advertise to make you aware of coke nor do car companies advertise to make you aware of cars. They do things differently because their size and markets are different.

My point of a lemon market is that with the loss of ability to physically scrutinize products, you cannot tell the difference between a lemon or a peach. What I didn't say, is that this incentivizes more dark patterns like making returns difficult. Part of Amazon's quick adoption was free returns, making the downside of buying a lemon low, only costing you time. But the idea of tricking you into buying something, especially with a subscription, and making you live with the purchase sounds more like the strategy of an infomercial penis pill scam, not a blue chip business.

This isn't "if you run into assholes all day" situation, but I think it should be more widely recognized that Apple is slowly regressing into a casino franchise. They sell slot machines that also support phone and media consumption, and keep fraction of sales made on slot machines.

I don't deny that about Apple[0], but that seems irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43873275

> ...it was well understood that people were still visiting stores so that they can inspect items before purchase.

You have all the pieces but you're not putting them together.

Bricks and mortar stores cost money just to exist - rent, rates, staffing, etc. - and that's why they can't compete on price with online stores, which can just be giant warehouses with shipping. The online arms of some physical stores can benefit from the same economies as totally online businesses, leading to cheaper prices online even for companies with a physical presence.

How can a physical shop make any money if they are just treated as a gallery for browsing before the buyer heads to Amazon to get the item 10% cheaper? It's not bean counting, it's basic economics.

How the fuck are you supposed to know what you're buying, indeed - patronise physical businesses because you recognise the value in their existence, and understand that that's worth paying an additional premium for.

  > Bricks and mortar stores cost money just to exist

I understand this. I'm not sure why you think I don't. I thought it was a pretty obvious thing...

Because you said this:

> I've constantly wondered why this doesn't really exist.

and if you understand that real stores are more expensive to run than online stores, then the rest seems obvious?

Places like that did exist in the past - they were the places we had to go to buy things. Online prices are lower so people bought online instead and drove most of them out of business.

Perhaps I'm missing something?

Best Buy is actually pretty good these days. If you have a Micro Center in your area, they're even better. Both will price match Amazon.

XREAL is on Amazon, and their return policy is pretty good.

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