Thread by @minethatdata

1 - So let's say you adore the omnichannel thesis and you are generally aligning with a thesis that retail is imploding at an accelerated rate and store closures are going to be epic and job losses enormous and stores should become distribution centers.

2 - You could potentially argue that this is what the customer "wants" ... and you could make a data-driven argument that is convincing. It wouldn't be a challenging argument, and the data exists to prove you right.

3 - You could make a strong case that this is what retail brands "want" ... or they wouldn't have aligned channels for a decade and communicated via digital marketing that the customer must shop online right now and eschew a store.

4 - Heck, you could make the argument that that retailers really WANT this because it allows the retail brand to go bankrupt and therefore the retail brand gets out from under crippling debt. The retail brand can close EVERY store, wooo!

5 - Summarizing your argument, then ...

a) COVID accelerates store closures, job losses, and conversion of stores to distribution centers.

b) Customer want this 'cause they aren't shopping in stores.

c) Retailers forced this via non-stop digital comms. and debt avoidance.

6 - Assume all of this is right.

If you are cheering this on (and I see it out here every day), what exactly are you cheerleading anyway? What, specifically, are you enthusiastically cheering for?

7 - Do you want the whole retail ecosystem burned down?

8 - Do you have a specific plan for rebuilding retail from the ashes of what is coming in late 2020 - early 2022 and that fuels your desire to burn the whole retail ecosystem down?

Do you profit from your specific plan?

9 - Right now, I see several camps out here. I could be wrong about this, obviously.

10 - There's a camp that wants to execute 2010 - 2019, just harder, in an effort to overcome 2020.

11 - There's a camp that wants the whole retail ecosystem to burn down and then wants to be in on the ground floor of rebuilding "a new retail" from scratch, in their vision. Could work, sure.

12 - There's a "the customer is always right and the customer chose e-commerce and mobile and social and politics and influencers and memes so the heck with the rest of you go figure it out" camp.

13 - Having observed 2020 and how the experts out here have responded to it, one thing is clear.

Nobody ... not one person ... has answers.

But the "old order" is burning down.

And "something" will replace the old order.

14 - As I observe retail and e-commerce in 2020, it is clear that the old order is burning down. It's the end of a twenty-five year run.

I was there when the old order (cataloging) burned down, beginning in 1995-1996.

15 - We're watching the old order of retail burn down as we speak ... we might be 5-ish years into this process.

Maybe most interesting is that we "might" be watching the old order of e-commerce begin to burn down.

16 - Think about this for a moment.

Without retail to fuel e-commerce growth, e-commerce is growing but not nearly fast enough to compensate for retail losses. It's the first time e-commerce "failed".

17 - Amazon is by most accounts somewhere between 30% and 40% (+/-) of e-commerce.

That means there really isn't anything that is truly "e-commerce". There's "a-commerce" and then there's everything else. And a-commerce is killing e-commerce.

18 - The USPS is being burned down by "some" accounts .... think about how much smaller e-commerce brands who thrive via marketplaces and Shopify and Etsy ... MailChimp-style brands ... are being harmed by the USPS being purposely burned down.

19 - UPS / FedEx cannot guarantee they'll deliver your packages this fall either ... and want to charge more even though they may not be able to handle the volume.

Your distribution partners are dying, thanks to COVID.

Meanwhile those a-commerce vans dominate the roads.

20 - Is it any wonder Best Buy wants to turn stores into distribution centers that customers are forced to drive to?

Can Best Buy trust USPS / UPS / FedEx?

And FYI, where are the Best Buy vans dominating neighborhoods? Or Target vans? Or Walmart vans? Interesting question, eh?

21 - By the end of 2020, the story might be how the "old order" of retail has been burned down ... while the "first generation" of e-commerce is being burned down by a-commerce.

22 - We might look back at 2020 as the year when it all "burned down".

I'm not saying that's good/bad.

I'm saying how you RESPOND to everything being burned down is important.

23 - Your homework assignment?

a) What is your response as a professional if retail is formally being burned down?

b) What is your response as a professional if e-commerce is about to be burned down by the dominance of a-commerce (if I am right, and I could easily be wrong)?

24 - I'm gonna spend a few days fleshing out my thoughts regarding the possibility that classic e-commerce is about to be burned down by an ecosystem that cannot handle it (USPS, UPS, FedEx) paired with an ecosystem (Amazon / a-commerce) designed to destroy it.