[HN Gopher] Death of the Department Store
___________________________________________________________________
Death of the Department Store
Author : samclemens
Score : 97 points
Date : 2024-09-24 19:23 UTC (1 days ago)
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| baggachipz wrote:
| https://archive.is/slouE
| delichon wrote:
| Seems like they just got so much bigger that we don't even
| recognize them as a department store. Walmart, Costco, Home
| Depot, et al. are just variations on the theme. Extrapolate and
| discover that we'll eventually live and shop in a department
| store that encapsulates the planet like Trantor.
| ghaff wrote:
| I think the distinction is between historically urban
| department stores and big box suburban stores although there
| was a period when you had (now dying) department stores like
| Macy's in the suburbs.
|
| I think it's an open question what happens to downtowns with
| the diminution of brick & mortar retail and people coming into
| offices (even if the latter has reversed in favor of office
| work more than some had predicted). A lot of cities have ebbed
| and flowed over time and there's no guarantee of a specific
| universal future pattern whatever some individuals may wish
| for.
| buescher wrote:
| Suburban malls were really disruptive to the dry goods
| industry - in the sixties. Well-run stores adapted fast to
| needing have anchor stores at malls. I wonder how things
| would have played out differently if the generation that
| computerized their stores before the personal computer era
| and finessed the transition to malls had still been calling
| the shots at these companies during the dotcom boom.
| ghaff wrote:
| There was a period where you had a lot of white flight from
| urban centers in the US and a lot retail moved out to the
| suburbs as a result. Retail pretty much follows the
| consumers. I'm not sure retail could have (or had the
| incentive to) keep the consumers in the cities.
|
| As anecdata, when I graduated from grad school in the mid-
| eighties, other than Manhattan financial people, pretty
| much no one I knew went to live in a major city. In
| Massachusetts, none of the computer industry jobs were in
| Boston any lony longer.
| tivert wrote:
| > I wonder how things would have played out differently if
| the generation that computerized their stores before the
| personal computer era and finessed the transition to malls
| had still been calling the shots at these companies during
| the dotcom boom.
|
| A lot of it was bad luck. Sears shut down their catalog
| operation in 1993, because it was losing money, but if
| they'd held on for a few more years they'd have been in a
| prime position to be Amazon.
| buescher wrote:
| Sears managed to miss both the opportunity to be Amazon
| and the opportunity to be Home Depot. At some point you
| have to wonder how much luck was really involved.
| jewayne wrote:
| The US financial system discourages mature companies from
| making the kinds of investments necessary to stay
| relevant indefinitely. Maybe in a Jack-Welch-free world
| Sears would have become Amazon, but in our world a mature
| company has to maximize this quarter's profits, over and
| above all concerns about the future.
| buescher wrote:
| Well, Amazon was a venture-funded startup, so sure, but
| Home Depot and Lowes? Other companies managed under
| similar constraints. Sears, on the other hand, introduced
| and successfully marketed the Discover card during that
| era, which is still plugging along. Probably to be more
| like GE, which used to have a big financial services
| division. There's nuance here.
| ghaff wrote:
| In the 80s, Sears was this sort of meandering store with
| no real identity that had some strong points (Craftsman)
| but had mostly mediocre clothing--they brought in Lands
| End but mis-managed. Were OK in appliances but big box
| vendors really out-competed them. And Walmart really
| outcompeted on discount.
|
| I did shop at Sears at one point especially after I
| bought a house but they became increasingly uninteresting
| relative to alternatives.
| bluedino wrote:
| They would have just had to become Amazon
| (inventing/creating everything involved with that) while
| being saddled with the overhead of 350,000 employees and
| 1,500 dying retail stores. And no Jeff Bezos at the helm.
| buescher wrote:
| Well, Amazon did Amazon, right? So it's not impossible to
| be Amazon.
|
| They had had a catalog operation and by some accounts
| class-leading (for the time) information systems. They
| had Prodigy and more or less successfully pivoted into
| making Prodigy an ISP. Undoubtedly they knew a lot of
| things Amazon had to figure out from scratch. The notion
| that Amazon was a great invention rather than just great
| execution is kind of risible.
|
| Flip it around - what could Amazon have done with 1500
| marginally profitable retail stores and a storied brand
| name? Sears kept the party going for a couple decades
| after the dotcom era, and still exists, so they weren't
| on the brink of folding back then. Note also that Sears'
| failure was not preordained: other brick-and-mortar
| retailers from the era have survived and even prospered.
| throwup238 wrote:
| I think the Costco Idiocracy scene is probably going to be the
| most prescient portrayal of the future:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdNmOOq6T8Y
|
| Trantor is the seat of a galactic empire with thousands if not
| millions of planets supplying its population. Skynet by
| Haliburton-Costco-TraderJoes will eat the world long before
| we're interplanetary.
| pmarreck wrote:
| Idiocracy is a rare example of something that is aging like
| cheese instead of milk.
| deepfriedchokes wrote:
| That's clever, but I think it's just us that's aging. When
| you're young and dumb and full of... optimism, you don't
| really notice how fucked up everything and everyone is. It
| just hasn't sunken in yet.
| dole wrote:
| We can only hope Terry Crews runs for president.
| buescher wrote:
| Big box stores are really qualitatively different from what a
| department store was - although the department store's
| brilliant marketing innovation of letting customers handle the
| merchandise as if it was already theirs led to big box discount
| stores and supermarkets. Merchandising and decor have been
| going downhill in even the best mall anchor stores for decades,
| so maybe the gap isn't as big now, but it was a really
| different shopping experience within living memory.
| mc32 wrote:
| This is going to sound sexist, or youthist... but... dep't
| stores used to hire young people for many of the display
| cases, either gals or guys --of course they had the
| "patronly" guy for serious things, like suits and so on, but
| for many things they had something not quite over the top
| like the buxom and ripped "kids" A&F had, but the guys and
| gals were not frumpy... these days it's different.
| buescher wrote:
| For the displays? Rarely. But as salespeople, well, that
| too. There's probably a whole lot to unpack in the why of
| that, but there just aren't as many young people, more of
| them are fat, and on the whole people don't dress as
| carefully.
|
| As an aside, I've lived away from urban areas for a while
| now, so maybe I am not the best judge, but I would be
| dumbstruck today by a first-rate window display in a
| downtown retail store.
| jerlam wrote:
| Having a job, any job, as a teenager is now looked upon
| as something that makes you look poor, and in many states
| the minimum wage is barely worth the effort. Wealthy
| parents would rather their children spend their time
| doing more studying or extracurriculars, since both of
| those have a better return when applying for colleges
| than any retail job.
| t-3 wrote:
| It's also just a hassle that neither employers nor the
| prospective employees want to deal with. Tons of rules
| and regulations for the boss, very limited working hours,
| and the risk of an immature kid suddenly quitting without
| notice or throwing a tantrum. The kids have to get a work
| permit from their school, have to find someone willing to
| hire them (for probably less than the adult minimum
| wage), and then do the type of menial and unrewarding
| drudgery that drives working adults to despair. The days
| boomers talk about - when a kid could start work at 14
| and make money worth spending and get useful experience -
| are long gone.
| lupusreal wrote:
| There was something to be said for being able to get jobs
| fast because the relationship and obligations between
| employees and employers was so minimal, when you could _"
| give the boss a firm handshake"_ and start working that
| day, then find a new job just as fast if your boss turned
| out to be an abusive prick.
|
| These days if an _adult_ wants to get even a basic
| unskilled labor job it takes weeks or months to get
| through the application and review process and the temp-
| to-hire run-around that follows it. The result is mostly
| the same for employers, they ultimately only hire people
| they feel they can count on and the extra overhead just
| represents a few more people in HR for them. But for
| employees, the lengthy process makes switching jobs a
| stressful ordeal of getting tangled in inhuman
| bureaucracy while your need to pay rent looms.
| mc32 wrote:
| Sorry not the window displays, but display cases: the
| sales help.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| "Captain Peacock, are you free?"
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Are_You_Being_Served%3F
| ztetranz wrote:
| You beat me to it. :)
| dheera wrote:
| The practice of preferentially hiring conventionally-
| attractive women for sales is still rampant even if people
| don't admit to it. In parts of Asia it's unfortunuately
| often explicit; job postings often specify the race, age,
| weight of what they are looking for.
| conductr wrote:
| Same in US for actual sales roles, it's unspoken though.
| But the retail experience is mostly not actually sales.
| It's entirely self service, walk into a warehouse, find
| what I need, use a kiosk to pay. The humans typically
| only get spoken to for orientation (they point you in
| right direction, sometimes) or if doing a return or
| having some issue with the intended frictionless self
| serve shopping experience (like a barcode won't scan). So
| what you find from a human physique perspective is looks
| don't matter at all. They'll intentionally hire ugly
| people if they will take less pay, which statistically is
| the case since data shows good looking people make more.
| jerlam wrote:
| It's not considered "sales" nor "commission" but I would
| imagine that hiring attractive people as servers
| (restaurant waitstaff) who rely on tips is a similar
| concept.
| Earw0rm wrote:
| Not exactly - part of the department store experience is the
| relative expertise of staff in each department. And the sales
| pitch is one of high value, you might even say beauty or care.
|
| Costco/Walmart are, from a European perspective, more like a
| "cash and carry" wholesaler masquerading as retail. There is
| very little effort made to present the goods, it's all about
| high volume and the lowest possible price. They're equivalent
| to our supermarkets/hypermarkets, but even bigger and broader
| in scope.
|
| This might sound like I'm stanning for department stores but
| not really. They're way more expensive than Amazon or discount
| retail, priced more like a specialist, and the quality and
| expertise doesn't always match the presentation. You can easily
| end up paying specialist prices for Amazon quality if you're
| not careful.
|
| Anyway, I think their time is up, perhaps with a few high-end
| exceptions surviving as a luxury tourist experience. In central
| London, we've a department store just for toys - like an old-
| fashioned and upmarket Toys'R'Us - and today's generation are
| basically un-wowed. Like, sure it has a lot of stock, but the
| big etail operators have a lot more again. And you don't have
| to travel 40 minutes to look at it.
| jasode wrote:
| _> part of the department store experience is the relative
| expertise of staff in each department. And the sales pitch is
| one of high value, you might even say beauty or care._
|
| Yes, exactly. To add to that, the salespeople in each
| department got a percentage sales commission. E.g. at Sears
| department store, the salesperson in jewelry dept was on a
| commission structure. The salesman working the Sears
| appliance center got a commission when the customer bought a
| washer & dryer or refrigerator; same situation in the Sears
| furniture department when a customer bought a sofa.
|
| In contrast, the big-box discount stores like Walmart and
| HomeDepot have hourly paid employees without sales
| commissions.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| That is an excellent reason _not_ to go to such places. For
| some stores, "we don't work on commission" is a selling
| point to the customer.
| dwaite wrote:
| I think it tends to push to the extremes. Either it
| provides an incentive structure that retains knowledgable
| salespeople and provides a huge customer benefit, or it
| winds up being toxic for both the employees and
| customers.
| devilbunny wrote:
| Commissions work best when the customer and sales staff
| have long relationships and a decent knowledge of their
| markets. That's rarely the case at retail and pushes more
| hard-sell types.
|
| In B2B, it's about a relationship and trust. My FIL sells
| clothes. He's the middleman between the manufacturers and
| the stores. He has a territory and based on what's
| happening in other stores in the region he can steer them
| toward the right stuff for _their_ store. I.e., what 's
| this store's target age range, how affluent is the area,
| and so on. In return, when he does a good job with them,
| they will learn to trust his advice on what will
| generally sell well, and he ends up getting better
| commissions. He sells about a dozen lines from about six
| manufacturers, though about three or four of the lines
| tend to make up the bulk of his income.
|
| Since he's very good at his job, he can demand higher
| commissions than other salesmen just to take a line on.
| He's got the on-the-ground relationships, and a
| manufacturer will give him a bigger cut because he's not
| going to have canceled orders, returns, or headaches for
| them.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Iterated prisoner's dilemma vs regular
|
| Same reason people are mean on the Internet
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| In the old world where people knew each other, knew this
| was a lifelong sales relationship, and we saw each other
| at the grocery store, church, it worked pretty well. In
| the modern world where we are as anonymous to each other
| in person as online it doesn't really.
|
| Back when I was a rich tech guy, the local Nordies would
| hold all the Ugg styles in my daughter's size and the
| next up for my daughter when the season started because
| the sales lady that worked with my daughter and wife had
| a relationship with them. It was an AMAZING shopping
| experience for my daughter. She was seen by the sales
| person. She felt special. And my daughter had some issues
| that made her feel less than special. But here was this
| beautiful sophisticated sales person not only seeing her,
| but helping her in areas she felt poor self worth in. And
| if you make my daughter feel special then I'm coming back
| to you year after year. But if I go in and am a random
| person to you, and you are to me, why pay Nordies prices?
| Earw0rm wrote:
| Yep, and they trade on reputation, thinking that will let
| them off on other factors.
|
| We have a store here, John Lewis, whose tech department
| sells lots of Macs and high-end TVs.
|
| So when they got in some 17 inch HP android tablets, I
| figured, surely they can't be _too_ bad? This was before
| iPad Pros, and I liked the idea of a large tablet.
|
| The thing was absolute garbage, stuck on an already-
| obsolete Android release. At least their returns policy
| was accommodating, but that's half a day I'll never get
| back.
| bluedino wrote:
| Best Buy always pushed this. All the salespeople seem
| uninterested, uninformed hard to find, and all they want
| to do is sell the warranty/accessories.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Good! There's no way they would be an expert on TVs
| anyway. I go elsewhere for _information_ about TVs. The
| store is for simply purchasing the TV.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Yes, we now all trust the random internet 'experts' whose
| profit motives we have zero knowledge or insight into.
| vector_spaces wrote:
| I realize you aren't saying this, but note that while
| commissions are common among larger department stores, it
| doesn't hold true in general across specialist retailers
| that every staff member is on commission. For instance, if
| you go to a specialty cheese or wine shop, or a fishmonger
| or supplement store or even smaller local department
| stores, it's entirely possible to meet a sales clerk on
| commission, but it's also (perhaps more) likely that you
| won't.
|
| Also, RE staff commissions -- this isn't always bad for the
| customer as some here are implying. Although there are
| stores where commissions can come directly from the
| manufacturer, or where some manufacturers offer staff
| commissions but some don't -- this tends to be bad, nearly
| always.
|
| On the other hand, if the commission comes from the
| employer, this can incentivize staff to build deeper
| product knowledge and awareness of tradeoffs between
| different brands and products (not to mention: mindfulness
| of trends, customer feedback and return rates, etc), which
| IME leads to better service and better sales for everyone
| involved. I mean, yes, sure, it can also lead to employees
| simply parroting whatever they learned from the
| manufacturer brochure. YMMV
|
| Brick & mortar retailers that don't provide commissions at
| all often still allow manufacturer led trainings of staff
| -- the retailer views this as essentially free staff
| development and morale building by increasing staff product
| knowledge while often providing free product or steep
| discounts. Sometimes manufacturers will straight up give
| away prizes unrelated to the products they sell (I've seen
| supplement vendors give away iPhones or cash prizes, for
| instance). Sales reps sometimes build personal
| relationships with certain retail workers they know have
| influence over purchasing or merchandising decisions. Often
| this is explicitly forbidden, but in practice virtually
| every company that has rules like this also rarely enforces
| them
|
| In any case, my point is that commission structures do not
| imply that you're getting bad/misleading information from
| sales staff, and lack of commission structures don't mean
| that sales staff are free of undue influence from sales
| reps and manufacturers or that they otherwise aren't
| incentivized somehow to push a particular product on you.
| RGamma wrote:
| It's probably a good idea if you can find a self-employed
| expert for that specialty (like a decorator or kitchen
| builder) and have them make recommendations on what to
| get where. There's a (real, _ahem_ ) risk that you'll get
| a bad in-store salesperson that only cares about your
| card swipe.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| The self-employed expert still have self interests. That
| kitchen builder generally get's discounts/kickbacks from
| Tom's appliance based on volume. So you are backed to
| 'commissioned sales staff' just in a way less opaque
| manner.
| galleywest200 wrote:
| > Costco/Walmart are, from a European perspective, more like
| a "cash and carry" wholesaler masquerading as retail
|
| Costco _is_ wholesale, they just allow "members" to buy some
| of it too. Costco supplies quite a lot of things to
| enterprises such as office supplies and food.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Americans might be more familiar with FAO Schwartz, an
| iconic, up-market toy store formerly with a flagship in New
| York City on Fifth Avenue, which featured in several films
| including _Big_ (starring Tom Hanks).
|
| The company has been through several ownership changes and
| bankruptcy in the past quarter century, and was at one point
| in fact owned by Toys "R" Us. Since 2016 it's been owned by
| ThreeSixty Group, of which also presently owns Sharper Image
| and Vornado.
|
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAO_Schwarz>
| cobbzilla wrote:
| You can still see (and play!) the "Big Piano". It was
| relocated after FAO closed and is now in the flagship
| Macy's in NY. It's looking kinda beat up these days,
| perhaps even symbolic.
| buescher wrote:
| >part of the department store experience is the relative
| expertise of staff in each department
|
| That's been unusual in the United States for at least a
| generation. Nordstrom is a notable exception. Department
| stores have shed departments, too. The camera counters hung
| on for a while after other electronics and toys had gone to
| big box stores, but they've gone the way of the candy and nut
| counter.
| chefandy wrote:
| Yeah. At best, most I've been to over the past couple
| decades seem to have roving cashiers that went through a
| program about how to be irritatingly salesy and _might_
| know where a specific thing was in their department. Sears
| was barely better than K-Mart in its death throes after the
| CEO decided to embrace the Hunger Games organizational
| strategy.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| As I remember it, Sears was basically gutted by its CEO,
| Eddie Lampert, for his own personal profit at the expense
| of the company.
| chefandy wrote:
| From what I read, he theorized that internal competition
| was the only way to incentivize efficiency rather than
| being propped up by the rest of the company. Essentially,
| made each division compete for funding, which naturally
| lead to undermining and backstabbing-- for example, the
| retail division started undercutting Kenmore with other
| brands-- and eventually it all collapsed.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Lampert failed at the personal profiting part big time:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/18/business/sears-edward-
| lam...
|
| Probably one of the worst business moves in the 2000s.
| bane wrote:
| >part of the department store experience is the relative
| expertise of staff in each department
|
| > Costco/Walmart ... There is very little effort made to
| present the goods, it's all about high volume and the lowest
| possible price.
|
| I can see that perspective, but it's actually quite wrong.
| Costco (and similar) put significant effort into buying and
| presenting high quality goods. Their value proposition is
| that they don't need on-hand staff with relative expertise
| trying to match the consumer to product.
|
| A century-plus of data on consumer buying habits have allowed
| them to engineer an environment where their value proposition
| is that they are only presenting to the customer good quality
| for price items. The limited, rotating, selection is Costco
| (and similar) putting their relative expertise _on the shelf_
| and there 's tremendous money spent by these companies
| figuring out how to do this.
|
| The "warehouse" environment is just another method to drive
| down costs in addition to eliminating pushy salespeople.
| Costco offers you usually one or two choices for an item,
| maybe for a few months, then it rotates out. Which one do you
| buy? It doesn't matter, they're both going to be of
| reasonable quality and value - a salesperson would try to
| direct a customer the same way. The stock rotation creates
| scarcity, but a good salesperson would let the consumer know
| "this sale is only valid for the next few days!" to create
| the same sense of urgency.
|
| These companies have huge analytics departments figuring out
| where the dairy should be in relation to the car batteries,
| and for how long they should have the special display for
| fresh shrimp running.
|
| Costco wants consumers to _feel_ like they are getting
| wholesale prices. But the actual wholesale experience is
| completely different. Actual wholesale buying experiences are
| in some ways closer to the traditional buying experience. You
| 're usually dealing with salespeople, hired by the
| originating company, who try to align you with the long tail
| of their product offering. Big wholesale markets even
| _advertise_ that you get to meet salespeople and negotiate
| buying terms.
|
| https://youtu.be/RDd10-poMm8
| Supermancho wrote:
| > Costco (and similar) put significant effort into buying
| and presenting high quality goods.
|
| That's a subjective statement. Costco's brands and products
| have been so consistently poor (and overpriced), we
| switched to Sams Club.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Subjective indeed. I also like Sam's, but mostly because
| they are essentially the same as Costco but with slightly
| different versions of things. While Costco has some
| stinkers, I still rely on them as a reliable source for
| generic products.
| sutra_on wrote:
| When talking about department stores people in Europe will
| likely mean something like Selfridges in London, not Costco
| or Walmart. A vast difference in service and presentation.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Quality companies can't survive on making 'limited,
| rotating selection'. Costco's model only works when
| piggybacking off of a long term model capable of sustaining
| the suppliers between 'limited Costco' manufacturing runs
| by selling products continually.
|
| The system is eating itself and we are at the point in this
| new cycle where it's showing.
| Earw0rm wrote:
| The wholesalers I'm thinking of are the "cash and carry"
| warehouse variety - Makro, Booker and so on.
|
| I don't mean Costco haven't put thought into what they're
| doing, but there is no attempt to create a perception of
| aesthetic value - indeed, quite the opposite to communicate
| their no-frills value of "the most stuff for the least
| money".
| tivert wrote:
| > Seems like they just got so much bigger that we don't even
| recognize them as a department store. Walmart, Costco, Home
| Depot, et. al. are just variations on the theme.
|
| I don't think so. Home Depot is _clearly_ a big hardware store
| / lumber yard. Costco may carry many kinds of merchandise,
| shelved roughly according to type, I don't think it really
| qualifies as it has unspecialized staff (and very few of them),
| little selection within each type of item, and probably its
| only true "department" is the tire department.
|
| The only thing you list that could arguably be a department
| store is Walmart, and I think the reason it's not recognized as
| one isn't because of its size, but because it's been drained of
| _all_ glamor.
|
| And none of them (at least in their non "super" sizes) are
| subjectively much bigger than the old mall department stores.
| buescher wrote:
| Walmart and Target are discount department stores, which is a
| different niche. K-mart is closing their last store,
| incidentally. There used to be more of them, too, and more
| regional ones.
| RoyalHenOil wrote:
| Kmart stores are still doing very well in Australia and New
| Zealand, with 325 locations serving a population less than
| 1/10th the size of the US.
|
| However, Australian/New Zealand Kmart stores have had no
| connection to American Kmart stores since the 90s, when
| Kmart Corporation sold them off to an Australian company
| that has managed them much more effectively.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Tbh Home Depot is to lumber what gas stations are to
| sandwiches. Actually this is unfair to gas station
| sandwiches, but you get the idea.
| buildsjets wrote:
| Home Depot and Lowes are absolutely department stores. You
| may be too young to remember what it was like before they
| existed (and yes there are long gone proto-bigboxes like
| Pergament that were popular in the the 1970s), but previously
| every trade had a specific store. Lumberyards carried lumber,
| and that's about it. Maybe some 10d common nails if you were
| lucky. In fact, you would go to one store for your
| dimensional lumber, a different store for your plywood and
| paneling, a different store for paint, a different store for
| hardware, a different store for appliances, electrical,
| plumbing, tools, draperies, flooring (tile or carpet?
| separate stores...) lighting fixtures, and then you had to go
| to a totally different garden center for all your outdoor
| needs. Now they are all departments within the same store.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Home Depot smells like a men's shelter/halfway house (it
| took me a couple trips to realize, why do I hate this
| familiar smell and not want to come back to this place).
|
| It has the most bottom of the barrel staff and a lumber
| yard that sells... something... that barely qualifies as
| lumber. It is the epitome of modern American capitalism. It
| exists solely because it exists. No one would ever see a
| current Home Depot when visiting someone and say 'oh my
| god, please replace our current store(s) with this!'. But
| department stores used to offer experiences where people
| said that.
| adamc wrote:
| The experience of something like Walmart is so much degraded
| from, say, the Marshall Field's I grew up with in Chicago,
| that... no. They are nothing like classic department stores.
| They are more like a modern K-mart.
| jhbadger wrote:
| Even Macy's (which is what took over Marshall Field's) is a
| far, far inferior experience to classy classic stores like
| Marshall Field's.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Seems like they just got so much bigger that we don't even
| recognize them as a department store. Walmart, Costco, Home
| Depot, et al. are just variations on the theme.
|
| That's not an issue of size; Walmart, Costco, and Home Depot
| are smaller than department stores are.
|
| And department stores have gotten smaller over time; they used
| to be much bigger than they are now, which you can see by
| visiting a flagship store.
| melagonster wrote:
| Thank you, You just randomly use Trantor as an example, Give me
| a warm feeling :)
| ScienceKnife wrote:
| I buy about 99% of what I consume online, so yeah, I would guess
| that old, large, and wasteful ventures will eventually die out.
| atourgates wrote:
| While "a major department store in every town" is probablty a
| thing of the past, my impression is that at least in major
| European capitals, the "national" department stores are still
| going strong.
|
| I make it a point to try and visit them when I can. A couple
| hours in Selfridges in London, Galeries Lafayette in Paris,
| Stockmann in Helsinki, Nordiska Kompaniet in Stockholm or Magasin
| du Nord in Copenhagen will tell you something about the country
| you're visiting, and keep you well entertained. I never buy
| anything outside of maybe a snack from their over-the-top food
| halls (most recently Moomin-shaped-gummies in Helsinki), or a
| sometimes surprisingly affordable lunch at one of their lunch
| counters (it's hard to beat the view you get along with your
| lunch or apero at the top Galeries Lafayette on their terrace).
|
| But in any case, none of these flagships have ever seemed empty
| or disused. On the contrary, I'm always surprised that while I
| might be astounded by the prices on display, there are always
| hundreds of local shoppers who seem to be quite happy to pay
| them.
| tpm wrote:
| I also enjoy El Corte Ingles in Spain.
|
| Sadly the German department stores seem to be dying and in the
| eastern countries the stores died in the 90's after the fall of
| communism.
| heikkilevanto wrote:
| Couple of years ago I went to Helsinki for my birthday, and got
| a gift card for Stockmann department store. I was so
| disappointed. I found the "department" for cooking things. But
| I did not find a section for frying pans or scissors. I found a
| section for Fiskars brand, and others. Fiskars had frying pans,
| scissors, and everything they make, up to and almost including
| their wood splitting axes. Other brands had their frying pans,
| pots, cutting boards, aprons, salt shakers, and whatever. I
| felt that I was supposed to decide first on what brand I
| wanted, and then what kind of thing. Maybe some people shop
| that way, but for me it certainly didn't work. Same thing with
| Magasin du Nord in Copenhagen. All about brands. A little bit
| of friendly service, but nothing special. But yes, they are
| busy with tourists and even some locals shopping. Glad we still
| have a few shops that specialize in the kind of things they
| sell, and can provide good service. That is the kind of shops I
| want to support, even at a bit higher prices.
| watt wrote:
| And? Fiskars frying pans are pretty good!
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| You can't really compare items if they are separated out by
| brands and not all together in a common 'pans' area. Being
| able to compare is a huge part of going to an actual
| physical store to look at the items. They are removing one
| of the huge reasons to go to the physical location.
| morsch wrote:
| I'm Germany, the writing is on the wall. 30y ago, there were
| three chains operating nationally (Karstadt, Galeria Kaufhof,
| Hertie, maybe there were others), each represented in bigger
| and even medium cities, often multiple times.
|
| They've all merged into one chain, and the resulting company is
| perpetually on the brink of bankruptcy. Every year or two, they
| announce store closures. This year, 9 out of 92 were closed,
| fewer than planned, because each closure gets heavy local
| opposition. That's down from 171 in 2020.
|
| Despite the opposition, the last time I went to one, it was a
| ghost town. I'm sure it wasn't prime time, but still, a weird
| vibe. Expensive, too.
|
| What killed it? Online shopping and non-food specials in
| discounters like Aldi.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| In the Netherlands, most of the traditional department stores
| have imploded and are long gone. I live in Germany currently
| and the local chains here have been struggling for decades as
| well.
|
| The exception to this seems to be flagship luxury stores with
| exclusive and expensive stuff on display. Here in Berlin that
| would be the Alexanderplatz Galeria and the KaDeWe on Kudamm.
| Both attract a lot of tourism. But the chains that own them are
| struggling as well. Tourists of course look but there's only so
| much they are going to stuff in their hand luggage when they
| fly back home. And they don't come back that often. The issue
| is that the locals ignore these stores because they can get
| better deals online for essentially anything sold inside those
| stores.
|
| KaDeWe filed for bankruptcy and is being restructured. And the
| group that owns Galeria is also being restructured. And not for
| the first time. Most of these things have been handed off
| between various hedge funds for decades now and they are just
| milking these things for short term profit.
|
| Online shopping killed off that market. If I need socks, I get
| them on Amazon.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Stockmann is dying slowly. They already shed at least food and
| electronics in at least their other stores in other cities.
| Also they are constantly losing money. I would not call that
| going strong, just barely surviving...
| orthoxerox wrote:
| I have no idea how Stockmann makes money. It's overpriced
| compared even to other brick-and-mortar shops, and doesn't
| sell anything unique.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| > Magasin du Nord in Copenhagen
|
| I'd recommend you go to Illum instead next time you are in
| Copenhagen.
| TimK65 wrote:
| Nordiska Kompaniet is no longer a proper department store, but
| a collection of boutiques. This has been the case for a couple
| of decades. The real department store that's left in Stockholm
| is Ahlens, but it's very mid-market, not fancy.
| mullingitover wrote:
| This isn't terribly surprising: it's an inferior business model
| to online sales.
|
| They put too many obstacles between the customer and the checkout
| counter. The customer had to travel, potentially long distances.
| Then they had to wander the aisles looking for the product,
| compare it without any unbiased third party reviews. Then they
| had to travel back home. This all added friction, not to mention
| the overall price of the products.
|
| All the opulence of those stores came from high operating costs,
| which were ultimately borne by the customer.
|
| The sales staff expertise came with commission-based sales, which
| meant you could never _really_ trust the salesperson because they
| had a vested interest in making a sale whether the product was
| good or not.
|
| Mourning the loss of department stores is like bemoaning the loss
| of fancy horse carriages.
| com2kid wrote:
| Compare that to todays model where I get to spend hours
| scrolling through Amazon listings of mostly the same product
| sold by different vendors, except occasionally there are small
| (but significant) differences. I don't get to see or touch the
| product until it arrives. For the product categories that still
| have recognizable brands (fewer and fewer every day it seems
| like) I am 100% reliant upon online reviewers, many of whom are
| biased and paid by the brands they are supposed to be
| reviewing.
|
| Amazon makes a lot of money by showing ads on their own site,
| so they are incentivized to keep me scrolling through page
| after page of listings crammed with ads, for as long as I can
| tolerate before I actually do make a purchase.
| musicale wrote:
| I'm a fan of the seemingly randomly chosen brand names on
| Amazon.
| prmoustache wrote:
| I buy a lot online and almost never on amazon, preferring
| shops focusing on a specific domain.
|
| I am pretty sure amazon/aliexpress model will be dying too at
| some point, because of the search nightmare, inexistent
| warranty and unreliable reviews.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| He did say "inferior business model". Not _inferior customer
| experience_.
| willismichael wrote:
| unbiased third party reviews
|
| Where can I find these unbiased third party reviews?
| musicale wrote:
| Consumer Reports, or what is left of it?
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >Consumer Reports
|
| They're not great either these days. They're pretty much in
| the business of affirming their readers preexisting
| viewpoints with a little bit of actual content sprinkled
| in.
|
| I find that reading amazon reviews worst first looking for
| failure modes to gauge a product's limits is more
| productive.
| dmonitor wrote:
| searching the product name and appending "reddit" to the
| query
| iso8859-1 wrote:
| Department stores are doing great in Mexico.
|
| For example, the high rise Mitikah in CDMX was recently
| completed, and it has a mall complete with metro access, cinema
| and a giant department store chain called Liverpool. Pictures
| from the opening[0].
|
| Another new mall, Portal Norte is under construction in
| Naucalpan, a suburb.[1] Not sure whether it will feature a
| Liverpool but I would almost be surprised if it wouldn't.
|
| I went to Puebla last month and it has a whole neighborhood of
| malls called Angelopolis, including bike paths to connect
| them.[2] The last mall opened in 2018.[3]
|
| I love malls because they are car free, pretty plants and have
| armed guards. It feels safer than being in the street.
|
| [0]:
| https://www.facebook.com/liverpoolmexico/posts/liverpool-m%C...
| [1]: https://www.eluniversal.com.mx/edomex/portal-norte-es-un-
| mon... [2]: https://www.corazondepuebla.com.mx/descubre/parque-
| lineal/ [3]:
| https://www.e-consulta.com/nota/2017-12-14/ciudad/abre-soles...
| prmoustache wrote:
| Well, Mexico is doing everything US does but with a 30 to 50
| years delay so that is not really suprising.
| TeaBrain wrote:
| Mexico is doing everything the US did of what? This isn't an
| explanation, but just a random idea.
| openrisk wrote:
| The department store embodies middle-class consumerism of the
| 20th century. While consumerism is going stronger than ever, the
| same cannot be said about the middle class.
|
| The shopping experience of the department store (pleasant
| environment, individual attention by knowledgeable salespeople
| etc.) is now only to be found in upmarket boutique shops, whereas
| hoi polloi are being served by goods distribution systems that
| are essentially automated.
| colechristensen wrote:
| The department store embodies old lady consumerism.
|
| It's where you go to find mediocre but overpriced products.
| It's where your mom bought clothes for you that you didn't
| really like. It's where your mom still shops. The pricing
| structure is based on making moms feel like they got a good
| deal on a "sale", but actually everything is just overpriced
| and you can't get things with the appropriate price unless you
| play their dumb game. There are stories about department stores
| stopping this and losing lots of sales because their customers
| were addicted to it.
|
| They simply failed to change to attract new generations, their
| buyers couldn't buy for the next generation, so they kept
| targeting their aging customer base until they were gone and
| poof, no more department stores.
|
| You probably could do a new generation of department store
| targeting younger folks, but it would have to be much
| different. Probably won't happen.
|
| My last department store trip was to buy socks, they didn't
| have what I wanted, then I paid an outrageous price for average
| athletic socks because I didn't have the right coupon, store
| card, flier, whatever. I wanted socks more than I wanted to go
| through the trouble of buying nicer or cheaper ones on the
| Internet as I was already there.
|
| Kohls has a deal where they will give you a substantial coupon
| if you return something from Amazon to the store. Fuck me
| though, I'm not going to do the obvious scam.
|
| I'd feel less ripped off spending $50 per sock at Hermes.
| spiffotron wrote:
| I think UK and US department stores are actually very very
| different. UK department stores generally only stock super
| high end designer gear, and sales / coupons are very very
| rare.
| echelon_musk wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| These negative comments seem way off base to me. I wonder
| if they have ever been to John Lewis or Debenhams?
|
| I really miss department stores and I'm sad that they're
| disappearing. I have positive experiences using them.
| Fluorescence wrote:
| The flag ship stores, the Harrods, the Harvey Nichols
| might fit the high-end description but the ones that have
| gone, the Debenhams, C&A, BHS etc. did not.
|
| A lot of the "branded" goods were more like the first OP
| said - just a print or a label with some credibility like
| Levis, Diesel, Calvin Klein, Armani but on indifferent
| quality stuff you would never see in a high-end store
| from the same brand - likely from the same factories
| filling up super-market own brands but at 1/5 the price.
|
| The sales were also a very big thing, especially the big
| dates like Boxing Day, New Years or Easter - it was a
| common habit to only buy clothes once a year. All those
| sales got gamed though, they would ship-in special tat to
| put on rails at 70% off for Dec 26th rather than actually
| discount their products and then they started before
| Christmas, and then from "Black Friday" and then from
| before "Black Friday"...
|
| Yet I still miss them too. I hate fashion/shopping but
| clothes are sensual, they rest against the skin for years
| and the difference between good and bad is materials,
| craftsmanship and fit whereas an online jpg of a black
| t-shirt and a review of "my husband says it's ok" really
| tells me nothing at all. I find online browsing,
| deliveries and returns more time-consuming and stressful
| than a rare shopping trip.
| naming_the_user wrote:
| I think that what you're describing is more like the
| "failure mode" of these stores - nowadays they are
| basically selling crap with labels, but in the 80s and
| 90s I don't think that was the case. It'd never be the
| same quality as a top end boutique of course, but it
| wasn't tat either.
|
| Or maybe that's just nostalgia!
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| Tat? Tattoo?
| pjc50 wrote:
| Does Primark count as a "department store"? TK Maxx? Or,
| since the closure of Debenhams and BHS, are we down to John
| Lewis (true archetype of the department store that sells
| everything), M&S, and the occasional Harvey Nicks?
| spiffotron wrote:
| I'd class Primark etc as fast fashion stores really - in
| my mind department stores are Harvey Nicks and Harrods
| etc
| pjc50 wrote:
| Harrods is kind of an exception as it's a single store
| that's always positioned itself at the very highest end
| of retail. It will probably outlast most other retailers
| so long as it retains that cachet.
| nkrisc wrote:
| When I think of heyday US department stores I think of
| Macy's, Sears, Carson Pirie Scott, Montgomery Ward,
| Nordstrom, and I'm sure offers I'm forgetting.
|
| Of course those are all either shells of their former
| selves or gone entirely.
|
| Macy's might have been the last high end department store
| in the US (that I'm aware of), but even 10 years ago going
| into their flagship Chicago location felt like walking into
| a K-Mart. I don't know if I'd consider stores like Saks to
| truly be department stores.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| The Macy's at 34th street in NYC is the flagship and it's
| still going strong. I went last week, lots of nice stuff.
| nkrisc wrote:
| That's good to hear. The impression I get is that Macy's
| outside of NYC is basically gone, in spirit if not
| physically.
|
| It's a shame because they took over the Marshall Field
| building in Chicago (another department store I forgot to
| mention) which is a gorgeous historic building, so it was
| kind of nice when Macy's moved in and fixed it up. Last
| time I was there it felt like a last-mile warehouse for
| their online delivery business. Same thing happened to
| the State St. Sears store just a block away.
| AmVess wrote:
| These are gone from many markets due to the race to the
| bottom. They cut the quality out of clothes so they could
| make more per item without paying attention to the simple
| fact that quality is what brought people into the store.
|
| At the end, they all sold the same junk sourced from the
| same places, but with different labels sewn into them.
| Consumers saw no value in paying a lot extra for
| something they could get for a lot less somewhere else.
| Thus, department stores outside of big cities vanished.
|
| The same thing happened to malls. They used to be full of
| locally owned businesses that offered a variety of goods.
| Now, they are all the same handful of stores selling the
| same things you can get for a lot less online. Even
| worse, nearly all of them offer a low rent experience
| because there are only a handful of stores left operating
| in each one. Seeing a building full of dark and closed
| stores screams economic decay. Who wants that experience?
| dartos wrote:
| I was born in the late 90s and I only remember malls with
| big brand stores.
|
| Maybe there was like 1 independently owned store at my
| local mall even I was a kid.
|
| It's a ghost town now.
| nkrisc wrote:
| I think the 80s was a big period of change from what
| malls were to what malls are now. My beard is only half
| grey, I wasn't there for that.
|
| I was born 10 years before you and I remember in the 90s
| smaller malls still having one-off and quirkier shops,
| but many of the bigger ones were already full of the same
| chain stores. Eventually the smaller ones closed or
| followed suit, until now even the bigger ones have met
| the same fate, it just took longer.
| foobarian wrote:
| > At the end, they all sold the same junk sourced from
| the same places, but with different labels sewn into them
|
| There has got to be a way to get good fabrics some other
| way even if they cost more. Merely going to a fancier
| store doesn't seem to work, because as you say they tend
| to use lower common denominator material suppliers.
| ghaff wrote:
| You go to specialty stores depending on what you're
| looking for. They may not be really high-end but I don't
| have a real argument with brands like Patagonia for the
| most part for things like outdoor clothing. For dress
| clothing, something like Joseph Banks really isn't bad
| and you get tailoring as needed.
|
| And I'm sure there are plenty of even higher-end stores
| at least in big cities. I'm not into "fashion" as such so
| can't really speak to boutiques along Fifth Avenue or
| wherever.
| colechristensen wrote:
| You have to be able to determine the quality yourself.
|
| Find these things at actual boutique retail locations
| which are rather hard to find, or individual
| manufacturers direct to consumer website, and to find
| those... I don't know, it's not easy.
| foobarian wrote:
| I think I somewhat know how to do this, i.e. feel a
| fabric and gauge its thickness and weave. What I don't
| know is how to search for it. What do you filter to get
| the thicker, densely woven cotton like polo shirts used
| to be made of in the 80s, instead of thin see-through
| half synthetic stuff so common today?
|
| Wondering if there are technical specs for this like
| there are e.g. for paper with their "24 lb paper" etc.
| matwood wrote:
| As a kid I loved getting the Sears catalog before
| Christmas. I would pour over that thing looking for
| something I might be able to convince my mom to get me
| for Christmas. Thank you for the pleasant memory :)
| decafninja wrote:
| I'm curious why you don't consider Saks a department
| store.
|
| Do you feel the same about similar stores generally
| considered upmarket of Macys? Bloomingdales, Nordstroms
| (which you did mention), Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman,
| to name a few.
|
| YMMV but I wouldn't consider Macys to be a "high end"
| store.
| arethuza wrote:
| "only stock super high end designer gear"
|
| I don't think that applied to BHS or Debenhams - both long
| gone though....
| colechristensen wrote:
| In major US cities, there is sometimes one department store
| that meets this qualification, like San Francisco, Chicago,
| or New York, but even those are in decline.
|
| >super high end designer gear
|
| In theory this is what they're trying to project, but what
| it actually is around here is designers who were high end
| decades ago who have since dumped their quality and started
| selling to K-Mart. First you start selling to the rich,
| then you start selling to teenagers, then you put your
| label on anything hoping the symbol has some small value
| left.
| shiroiushi wrote:
| >There are stories about department stores stopping this and
| losing lots of sales because their customers were addicted to
| it.
|
| This sounds like what happened to JC Penney.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > You probably could do a new generation of department store
| targeting younger folks, but it would have to be much
| different. Probably won't happen.
|
| This seems to have been replaced by Shein/Temu, which don't
| require you to get off your phone and go to a physical
| location.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Think of the health and the environmental benefits \s
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| Getting outside is good for your health. If you go to the
| store by bicycle, it's also good for the environment.
| lupusreal wrote:
| I'm pretty sure I got PTSD as a kid by getting dragged
| through these department stores for hours upon hours by my
| mom as she mindlessly browsed through clothes. Five hours to
| buy five shirts? I swore I would never shop at such stores,
| and I never have.
| chasd00 wrote:
| Yes, me too. And no phone or anything to occupy your time.
| Just behave and follow your mom step after step for hours.
| pfdietz wrote:
| > There are stories about department stores stopping this and
| losing lots of sales because their customers were addicted to
| it.
|
| On the plus side, we got that memorable joke in "Airplane!".
| Merrill wrote:
| The department store was a place where women could escape
| their houses or apartments and spend time in surroundings
| That were much more expensive and attractive. Marble floors,
| decorated walls, mirrors and glass, finely finished display
| cases, and quality goods all contributed to a pleasant
| environment. Seasonal changes in decoration and products kept
| the experience fresh. The escapist experience was paid for by
| pricing the goods to cover the overheads.
|
| When the department store migrated to being the anchor store
| at the suburban mall, its role as an escapist haven was
| diluted by the mall's amenities and by the proliferation of
| boutique shops lining the corridors.
|
| On-line shopping now offers a wider selection of goods at
| lower prices. And social media offers an alternative
| mechanism to escape their present reality.
| lupusreal wrote:
| > _The department store was a place where women could
| escape their houses or apartments and spend time in
| surroundings That were much more expensive and attractive.
| Marble floors, decorated walls, mirrors and glass, finely
| finished display cases, and quality goods all contributed
| to a pleasant environment. Seasonal changes in decoration
| and products kept the experience fresh._
|
| I guess it was that way at some time in upscale
| neighborhoods, but what I remember as a kid is linoleum and
| cheap worn out commercial carpet floors, the stink of
| cleaning chemicals, low ceilings and dim light, and
| unceasing elevator music. It nonetheless kept women zoned
| out ambling through the halls for _hours_. John Romero got
| it right when he portrayed it in his zombie movies.
|
| The low energy music, the spread out merchandise, the
| allure of "sales" that could be down the next aisle, no
| visible windows to the outside... these stores were
| engineered to get people zoned out and lose track of time.
| Like casinos with less bells and flashing lights.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| My mom is a big fan of Kohl's. I casually mentioned I needed
| to restock on pants for the winter while visiting her last
| month, so she gave me her Kohl's coupon stack. Turns out that
| 40% off sale only was on certain brands. At least I liked the
| pants I bought.
| hinkley wrote:
| The whole time I grew up Department Stores were not functioning
| like old school department stores. With the exception of the
| cosmetics area in Macy's and Penny's that's still pretty true.
|
| Meanwhile Best Buy is looking more like an old school department
| store, with sections for one vendor.
| pmarreck wrote:
| There is a department store in Berlin called KaDeWe that is
| definitely worth a visit if it is doomed. It is probably the
| coolest department store I've ever seen.
| jhbadger wrote:
| Absolutely. It is probably the best existing example of the
| classic department store (not discount store like WalMart or
| the current version of Macy's) that is basically already gone
| in the US.
| rangestransform wrote:
| kadewe was amazing for finding brands that only dinky boutiques
| would carry in north america, only store outside of japan i've
| seen carry undercover
| dugmartin wrote:
| We lost our local family owned department store a few years when
| the CEO retired. Walking around in there was like stepping back
| in time.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson%27s_(department_store)
| twic wrote:
| There's an independent (ish) department store near me, Selby's,
| that's just about still going, somehow:
| https://www.elyswimbledon.co.uk/pages/james-selby
|
| And another that is no longer so near me, Boswells, that very
| sadly isn't: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boswells_of_Oxford -
| it was a frequent destination for homewares as a student, and
| then many years later, for last-minute christmas shopping as an
| uncle.
| langsoul-com wrote:
| Go to Asia, the department store is not dead in the slightest.
| Though, definitely changed a lot.
| conductr wrote:
| That would make sense as it's essentially a middle class
| novelty and their middle class is still rather novel.
| TeaBrain wrote:
| Novel where? I don't think this is a good explanation. Japan
| has had department stores for the better part of the last
| century.
| conductr wrote:
| Sure, Japan is probably one of the largest exceptions in
| all of Asia. I wasn't making a absolute statement, more
| relative. So in general directional terms, I guess I was
| thinking more so of China/India (that are individually over
| 10x Japan's population) and have a middle class consumer
| for only a couple decades now. Many other countries are
| closer to mirroring China than Japan and some don't even
| apply here because they don't have a significant middle
| class yet. I thought it would be obvious that China/India
| is most of Asia.
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| The switch to massive, centralized logistics, is itself a
| indicator of the impending death of a society. It removes the
| little local depots that are department stores, thus allowing
| supply-chain "kicks" to come in ever harder.
|
| If you remove dampening elements, the resulting system is more
| agile but also more fragile and potentially self-destructive.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| Impending death based on what? There's plenty of boutiques that
| cater to things above "the necessities", like groceries or
| clothes. Why do we need mom and pop grocery? It's not
| efficient. Take a look around at the amount of thrift or
| boutique clothings shops, they're small but large in number and
| it's not even including purely online boutique. People who cry
| about the death of the corner store have insane tunnel vision.
| jetrink wrote:
| I loved living around the corner from a small grocery store.
| It made it possible to pick up ingredients and fresh
| vegetables for dinner on the walk home from the train or when
| taking the dog for a walk with my wife. It was a bit more
| expensive, but that was offset by the fact that buying only
| what you need for the next couple of days leads to less
| spoilage and waste. Overall, our food budget has remained
| about the same since we had to move away.
|
| Where I live now, it takes 15-20 minutes to drive to the
| grocery store, so it's only practical to shop once per week.
| Shopping is a big chore and a fight with traffic, not a nice
| walk. It means I need to dedicate more of my apartment to
| food storage and more of my time to meal planning. It's
| certainly not an efficiency gain for me personally. On the
| plus side, the large store does have 73 different flavors of
| potato chips.
| IanCal wrote:
| How centralised the logistics are doesn't seem to me to be
| all that related to the size and number of the shops.
|
| For example, here there's Tesco. But there's huge tescos,
| tiny ones in towns, tiny ones outside of towns, subsidiary
| companies like onestop that exclusively are smaller shops
| (we tend to call them "corner shops" here).
|
| If anything, a larger central logistics "engine" behind it
| should make it much easier to pop up a new shop somewhere
| as most of the issues are solved and there's experience in
| doing it.
|
| It does however make things more boring.
| riskable wrote:
| > the impending death of a society
|
| _A_ society. The _old_ society. To be replaced by a _new_
| society that doesn 't work like the old one.
|
| The new society is evolving towards humans that behave like
| frogs: They're born in a certain area and don't roam too far
| from that original spot because everything they could ever want
| is available at their fingertips or only a hop away.
|
| To be fair, this is the primary factor why frogs (anura) have
| "survived" with few changes for about 250 million years.
| Innumerable creatures have come and gone in that time yet frogs
| are still around. Not a bad evolutionary strategy if you ask
| me.
| cooper_ganglia wrote:
| The humans in WALL-E didn't move too far, either...
| digitaltrees wrote:
| I think the point of the op was that the size of systemic
| shocks increases to the point where societal collapse is
| inevitable. Centralization decreases resilience and at a
| certain point the system can't handle the standard changes
| the system will experience.
| jollyllama wrote:
| For a certain interpretation this was also true of the old
| society. The definition of "too far" is subjective.
| thehappypm wrote:
| People are more mobile than ever. Everyone is flocking to big
| cities.
| bpfrh wrote:
| My guess is that People travel way more than in the last 50
| years and department stores have nothing to do with
| experiencing a diverse life.
| jdietrich wrote:
| Maybe department stores are very different in the US, but I'm
| not sure how much social benefit we gain from having a buffer
| in the supply chain of expensive clothes, cosmetics and
| homewares.
| mech975 wrote:
| Any inventory warehouse can choose how much inventory to stock.
| If it maintains, say, 1 month of monthly demand instead of 3
| months, it is more likely to run out of inventory during a
| supply chain shock. The fragility of the system is more related
| to this aspect than to anything else.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Capitalism reinvents communism: many such cases.
| janalsncm wrote:
| I've traveled to many places where stores seem to be doing just
| fine. They have too many employees, even, by American standards.
|
| I think it comes down to the cost of real estate. Both for the
| store, but also for employees' housing. Higher rents mean people
| need to be paid more which means fewer employees and a worse
| experience.
|
| I don't know who came up with the "30% of your salary" rule for
| housing, but it was probably the same person who came up with the
| "3 months salary for a ring" rule. It seems made up. 30% is way
| too high. I'd love to see a survey of these factors globally. I
| think we put up with things in America because we don't know any
| better.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > 30% is way too high
|
| Underestimate in many circumstances. Poor people living in UK
| cities are paying up to 50% of their income in housing.
| https://ifs.org.uk/inequality/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/IFS...
|
| (the Georgists have a point; over time, rentiers gradually
| capture more and more of an economy)
|
| Also department stores are a victim of a gradient across the
| globe. You want a _westerner_ , standing in a _western city_ ,
| to spend _time_ with you selling you a product? Of course all
| those things are staggeringly expensive. See also healthcare.
| pistoleer wrote:
| Everything in every society is just "made up".
| grecy wrote:
| Sure, and some of those things were made up thousands of
| years ago and have proven to work well since. Others were
| made up in the last 30 years by global corporations trying to
| extract maximum profit as fast as possible, future be damned.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| > I don't know who came up with the "30% of your salary"
|
| Well of course, it was "the experts". You know... "THE
| experts".
|
| I wish I had $20 for everytime the media parrots something
| without every questioning it. _And_ the masses nod mindlessly
| and think, "Yes, of course."
|
| In this case... Landlords, banks and real estate agents - all
| with an interest in higher === better - are the likely
| candidates for "the experts".
| brazzy wrote:
| You have no idea how clueless and privileged that idea is.
|
| Apparently you think that number is meant to encourage
| engineers who just landed a 200k FAANG job to buy a McMansion
| to get _up_ to 30%.
|
| It's quite exactly the opposite: it's usually given as an
| _upper limit_ to _prevent_ people from getting houses they
| can 't afford.
|
| And it's increasingly unrealistic for low-income people in
| HCOL areas because even the cheapest available housing is
| more than 30% of their income.
|
| As for who came up with it: it was originally an
| _observation_ of what people were typically paying, which in
| the 60s became a limit for the price of public housing. And
| at that time it was 25%, changed to 30% in the 80s.
|
| Source: https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr_edge_featd
| _articl...
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Huh? I didn't say it was legit. Actually...
|
| You missed the obvious sarcasm.
|
| You missed the bit about the mindless media repeating it
| and not asking how legit is.
|
| The point about the banks, etc is that ALL those "experts"
| have incentives to get people to buy more than they can
| afford.
|
| Come on man, the math was all there... just take a moment
| to add it up.
| naming_the_user wrote:
| It's not a rule, it's guidance to say - if you spend more than
| this you're probably being irresponsible and living outside
| your means.
|
| The thing is that you're never going to convince most people to
| give up living in the place they want to live in, they'll stick
| around until the bitter end, and that means you end up with
| people earning 10 pounds an hour living in Zone 2 London in
| some dickensian shoebox.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> 30% is way too high._
|
| It is not something to strive for. It is offered as a warning.
|
| Like how the US suggests 50 mSv/year for occupational radiation
| exposure. That doesn't mean you should go out and purposefully
| expose yourself to radiation to hit 50 mSv. You still want to
| minimize exposure to the greatest extent possible. The figure
| indicates the danger zone where if you see yourself drawing
| near, you need to get off the path you are going down.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| > I don't know who came up with the "30% of your salary" rule
| for housing
|
| The "30% of your salary" rule for housing stems from U.S.
| federal housing policy. It was first introduced in 1969 under
| the Housing and Urban Development Act as part of the
| government's effort to define affordable housing.
|
| 25%-30% was a benchmark used in housing assistance programs to
| determine eligibility for federal aid. If households spent more
| than 30% of their income on rent, they were considered "rent
| burdened" and might qualify for subsidies.
|
| https://www.hud.gov/about/hud_history
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_and_Urban_Development_...
|
| ---
|
| > person who came up with the "3 months salary for a ring" rule
|
| That was good old De Beers. In the 1980s, they promoted the
| idea that spending two months' salary on a ring was
| appropriate, which later increased to three months in some
| markets.
|
| Example of their marketing campaigns:
| https://i.etsystatic.com/17868656/r/il/2bc5ab/1933571085/il_...
| Double_a_92 wrote:
| For me personally they are just not a very attractive place. At
| best you get the grocery section and the shoe store.
|
| Everything else is usually too expensive, doesn't offer a good
| variety and quality of products, or is highly targeted at teenage
| girls for some reason. As a guy I honestly don't know where to go
| shopping for clothes... I just have to hope for occasional random
| finds.
| randomdata wrote:
| Groceries seem quite unusual for a department store, with their
| focus on quality and luxury (or at least the illusion of), and
| food being commoditized.
|
| Are you, perhaps, thinking of discount department stores?
| Groceries are quite commonly found there, but they are
| something quite different.`
| TheAdamist wrote:
| I've come to the conclusion that men will eventually just be
| naked in the future. Every time i go to shop for clothes in the
| USA the men's section has shrunk and the women's has gotten
| larger.
|
| Or we will all eventually just dress like steve jobs, just pairs
| of the one legal compliance shirt and pants combo available for
| sale.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Jeans that are acceptable and T-shirts made of whatever "ring-
| spun Egyptian cotton" that is cheap enough to feel like
| polyester and probably is
| consteval wrote:
| The men's clothes are still larger than they were in the 80s.
|
| Really men's clothing right now is just a game of doing
| whatever gay men do but, like, 5 years later. So that means in
| a year or two men's clothes will be back to thick pant legs,
| flares, and maybe even pleats.
|
| Don't worry, the cropped shirts and booty shorts was just a
| phase.
| nerdjon wrote:
| I don't think the booty shorts phase with gay men has ended
| yet, still very much see it in places like ptown. (however I
| do acknowledge that ptown is a bit of a bubble...)
|
| Personally I am waiting for the long earings to catch on
| outside of gay men.
| randomdata wrote:
| I'm told there is a growing trend of men wearing "women's"
| clothing. Perhaps the eventual outcome is that we will all wear
| the same thing (whatever women consider to be fashionable)?
| silver_silver wrote:
| I'm a 6'4" man and bought two pairs of trousers from the
| women's section recently. They fit perfectly but granted are
| what would have been marketed as "plus size" in the past. Would
| encourage everyone who doesn't mind a less utilitarian look to
| try it. There's a much, much wider variety of pieces and it's
| cheaper too - especially for more formal styles.
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