Polar vortex is here. I'm going to be outside at a customer site working on some equipment.
Need a hat. Something thick and furry.
We have an actual "indie millinery shop" in my city. Yay! Support your local merchant!
No winter hats. If I wanted a $399 Super Duper Hats Albino Fedora 100% rabbit fur felt fedora I could get it in an hour but no winter hats.
So then I went to Bass Pro, JCPenney, Sears, Nordstrom, Dick's, Macy's, Eddie Bauer, Burlington, Target, and finally REI.
Only a handful of them had any winter hats and none of them had any men's adult-sized hats in stock. Not even a beanie.
On Tuesday, January 29th at 6:57pm I left REI after having wasted over three hours going to 11 retailers and I got into my car. While in the REI parking lot I ordered a winter hat and gloves from Amazon for $45 with Prime next day delivery.
They were delivered at 3:03pm the next day. Before the sub-zero temperatures.
This keeps happening over and over again, I stopped being a "grazing" shopper over a decade ago and only buy specific items after research.
No retailers seem to be adapting, just racing to the bottom.
Burlington looked like a nightmarish blindingly brightly-lit hellscape with garbage that had already failed to sell at Target being strewn about as old ladies picked through it.
As far as I'm concerned, brick and mortar is dead.
edit: to be fair, if I wanted a SWAT-team/bank robber balaclava that covered my entire face, the sporting goods stores had me covered. I prefer that people I'm interacting with at work see my face.
Honestly, partnering with Amazon and basically giving you a product instantly would make brick and mortar thrive.
You want to buy this thing? If it's available at Best Buy, you can pick up within minutes at the counter and Amazon can ship a replacement to Best Buy in the next few days.
I wonder of retailers getting slightly different model numbers has anything to do with preventing this from ever being possible. I know they do it on black Friday to avoid price matching but I seem to run across wierd almost-exactly-the-same electronics at the local electronic stores more often than just black Friday.
John Lewis in the UK do this all the time, mostly because they loudly promise to match the price on any product in their store. It just so happens that the product in their store is a shade of green which is exclusive to them.
I already do this with Best Buy, with the added benefit of knowing that the product I'm buying isn't a cheap ripoff that was flipped from Alibaba.com, but fulfilled by Amazon.com.
FWIW REI will let you browse ahead of time by what's in stock at your local store, and can often get an item for pickup if they don't have it at your local location in a day or two for free.
(Granted, other choices might ship a bit faster or cost a bit less, but that's never been REI's niche)
I ran into a similar case with umbrellas- there weren't any local stores selling them on the day before a major rainstorm that ended up causing a significant amount of flooding around the state. Instead I'd decided to pay the premium and pick a reasonably sturdy one from Amazon with next-day pickup.
1000x this! I needed to buy golf balls for a Christmas gift. I went to 4 sports stores; “sorry we only sell hockey stuff”, “sorry that’s not in season right now”, “sorry we don’t sell golf stuff”, “umm let me check in the back... sorry not in stock”.
This is in a wealthy suburb where many homes back on to golf courses. So yep, I had to order them off Amazon.
Walmart is adapting fairly well. It's just that they have a stigma among wealthier folks, so we don't know about it. Walmart's online selection is often competitive with Amazon, or even cheaper. They have free 2 day shipping, you can ship to the stores, and Walmart is very good at having the right things in stock. I bet they would have had hats if you checked there.
Among Walmart's many stigmas is that they are associated with questionable conservative political causes, carried out now by the current generations that inherited the founder's money.
Paying millions to name a school arena after your daughter who was attending that school, then having no shame when it turns out said daughter was paying her roommate to do her school work - they did that. Bezos' kids are too young to have yet had their chance. I'm from the state where discount city was founded, I've seen this and much more. Before amazon, walmart was the mighty killer or all other retail. Now amazon is mightier.
Polar vortex is here. I'm going to be outside at a customer site working on some equipment.
Need a hat. Something thick and furry.
We have an actual "indie millinery shop" in my city. Yay! Support your local merchant!
No winter hats. If I wanted a $399 Super Duper Hats Albino Fedora 100% rabbit fur felt fedora I could get it in an hour but no winter hats.
So then I went to Bass Pro, JCPenney, Sears, Nordstrom, Dick's, Macy's, Eddie Bauer, Burlington, Target, and finally REI.
Only a handful of them had any winter hats and none of them had any men's adult-sized hats in stock. Not even a beanie.
On Tuesday, January 29th at 6:57pm I left REI after having wasted over three hours going to 11 retailers and I got into my car. While in the REI parking lot I ordered a winter hat and gloves from Amazon for $45 with Prime next day delivery.
They were delivered at 3:03pm the next day. Before the sub-zero temperatures.
This keeps happening over and over again, I stopped being a "grazing" shopper over a decade ago and only buy specific items after research.
No retailers seem to be adapting, just racing to the bottom.
Burlington looked like a nightmarish blindingly brightly-lit hellscape with garbage that had already failed to sell at Target being strewn about as old ladies picked through it.
As far as I'm concerned, brick and mortar is dead.
edit: to be fair, if I wanted a SWAT-team/bank robber balaclava that covered my entire face, the sporting goods stores had me covered. I prefer that people I'm interacting with at work see my face.
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