Comment by 20after4

Comment by 20after4 19 hours ago

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.

godelski 18 hours ago

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

Reply View 3 replies

numpad0 4 hours ago

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.

Reply View | 1 reply
- godelski an hour ago
  
  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.
  
  Reply View | 0 replies
bbarnett 13 hours ago

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.

Reply View | 0 replies